Pantagruel told him that, when dessert was brought in, Pan-urge had posed a problematical subject, namely, Should he or should he not marry. Père Hippothadée and Notre Maître Rondibilis had acquitted themselves of their replies, and, just as he came in the loyal Trouillogan was doing so. When Panurge asked him, ‘Should I marry or no?’ Trouillogan had first replied, ‘Both together,’ and then ‘Neither.’
‘Panurge is complaining about such inconsistent and contradictory replies, and swears that he can understand none of it.’
‘I do understand it, I think,’ said Gargantua. ‘The reply is similar to that given by a philosopher of old when asked whether he had ever had a certain woman (whose name was mentioned); “I hold her dear,” he said, “but she has no hold on me. She is mine: I am not hers.”’
‘A similar reply,’ said Pantagruel ‘was given by a parlourmaid of Sparta. Asked whether she had ever had anything to do with men, she replied, “No! But men had occasionally had something to do with her”.’
‘That,’ said Rondibilis, ‘is how we reach the Neutral in medicine and the Mean in philosophy: by participating in both extremes; by abnegating both extremes; or, by compartition of time, being now in one extreme, now the other.’19
‘The Holy Envoy seems to rae to have put that more clearly,’ said Hippothadée, ‘when he says, “Let those that are married be as not married; those that have a wife be as though having her not.”’ ‘I,’ said Pantagruel, ‘expound having and not having a wife this way: to have a wife is to have her as Nature created her, for the help, joy and companionship of man; not to have a wife is not to hang about her, not to sully for her that unique and supreme love which a man owes to God; not to shirk the duties which a man naturally owes to his homeland, the State and his friends; not to neglect his studies or his concerns in order to be ever indulging her. Taking having and not having a wife that way, I can see neither inconsistency nor contradiction in those terms.’20
The continuation of the replies of Trouillogan the Ephectic and Pyrrhonian philosopher
CHAPTER 36
[Was originally Chapter 35.
In the first sentence Rabelais again confuses Heraclitus and Democritus. The philosophical farce continues. Classical scepticism was still mainly known from Cicero’s Academics, but, according to Rabelais, it was becoming dominant. (Scepticism was widely seen at the time, though not later, as favouring evangelical teachings.) A maxim dear to lawyers said: ‘Words bind men: ropes bind bulls’ horns: a bull is caught by ropes: a man is bound by words.’ Another maxim added that horses are caught by their manes or their fringes.
Panurge is thrown back on to what he was told at the outset, and we are prepared for the paradox of Bridoye.]
‘You pipe up harmoniously,’ replied Panurge, ‘but I believe I’m down in that dark well where Heraclitus said that Truth lies hid. I can’t see or hear a thing. I feel all my feelings grow numb; I greatly fear that I may be under a spell. I shall speak in a different style.
‘Liege-loyal friend, don’t budge! Stuff nothing in your purse. Let’s change the luck of the dice and talk without logical disjunctives. I can see that those ill-joined clauses confuse you.
‘Now then: for God’s sake: Ought I to marry?’
TROUILLOGAN: ‘There is some likelihood.’
PANURGE: ‘And if I definitely don’t get married?’
TROU: ‘I can see no impropriety whatsoever in that.’
[PAN: ‘You can see none at all?’
TROU: ‘None: or my eyesight deceives me.’
PAN: ‘I can see more than five hundred!’
TROU: ‘Enumerate them.’
PAN: ‘I mean, improperly speaking, employing a definite number for an indefinite one, a precise one for an imprecise one, that is, many.’
TROU: ‘I am listening.’
PAN: ‘I can’t do without a wife, in the name of all the devils.’
TROU: ‘Avaunt: away with those nasty creatures!’
PAN: ‘So be it, for God’s sake: my local Salmagundians say that to lie in bed alone, without a wife, is a beastly way to live. And so said Dido in her lamentations.’
TROU: ‘I am yours to command.’]
PAN: ‘By Gord’s buddy, I’m all right then. Now: shall I get married?’
TROU: ‘Possibly.’
PAN: ‘Shall I find it all right?’
TROU: ‘Depends on whom you meet.’
PAN: ‘And if, as I hope, I am well met, will I be happy?’
TROU: ‘Sufficiently.’
PAN: ‘Let’s go against the nap: and if I am ill met?’
TROU: ‘No fault of mine.’
PAN: ‘For pity’s sake counsel me! What ought I to do?’
TROU: ‘What you will.’
PAN: ‘Fiddle-faddle!’
TROU: ‘No invocations, I beg you.’
PAN: ‘In God’s name, so be it. I only want to do as you advise me to do. What do you advise me?’
TROU: ‘Nothing.’
PAN: ‘Shall I get married?’
TROU: ‘I was never in on it.’
PAN: ‘I shall never get married then?’
TROU: ‘I can’t help that.’
PAN: ‘If I never marry I shall never be cuckolded?’
TROU: ‘So I was thinking.’
PAN: ‘Let’s put it that I am married!’
[TROU: ‘Put it where?’
PAN: ‘I mean, take it that I’m married.’]
TROU: ‘My hands are full.’
PAN: ‘Damme! Turds up my nose! Gosh! If only I dared to have a good quiet little swear, what a relief that would be! Good. Now then: patience! And so: if I am married I shall be cuckolded?’
TROU: ‘So one would say.’
PAN: ‘And if my wife is honourable and chaste I never shall be cuckolded.’
TROU: ‘You appear to be speaking correctly.’
PAN: ‘Listen to me.’
TROU: ‘As long as you like.’
PAN: ‘Will she be honest and chaste? That’s all.’
TROU: ‘I doubt it.’
PAN: ‘You’ve never even seen her!’
TROU: ‘As far as I know.’
PAN: ‘So why are you having doubts over something you know nothing about?’
TROU: ‘For a reason.’
PAN: ‘And if you did know her?’
TROU: ‘All the more so.’
PAN: ‘Page, my dear little fellow; here, take my bonnet. I’m giving it to you, minus the glasses. Go down into the back yard and do a little half-hour’s swearing for me. I’ll do the same for you whenever you want me to. But who will make me a cuckold?’
TROU: ‘Somebody.’
PAN: ‘By the guts of the wooden Gosh! I’ll give you a good scrubbing, Monsieur Somebody.’
TROU: ‘So you say.’
PAN: ‘May the devil – he with no white to his eyes – make off with me if I don’t buckle up my wife in a Bergamo-belt whenever I go out of my seraglio.’
TROU: ‘Mind your language.’
PAN: ‘Shitty-shanty for my language! Let’s reach a decision.’
TROU: ‘I do not oppose it.’
PAN: ‘Wait! Since I can’t draw blood from that spot I’ll bleed you from a different vein: are you or are you not married?’
TROU: ‘Neither one nor the other, and both together.’
PAN: ‘God come to our aid! By the death of Gosh, the effort is making me sweat; my digestion is upset, I can feel it. All my phrenes, metaphrenes and diaphragms are taut and fraught from infunnelizating your words and replies into the gamepouch of my understanding.’
TROU: ‘No hindrance to me.’
PAN: ‘Gee up, our Liege-loyal man! Are you married?’
TROU: ‘So I am persuaded.’
PAN: ‘And you have been married before?’
TROU: ‘That is possible.’
PAN: ‘Did it go well that first time?’
TROU: ‘That is not impossible.’
PAN: ‘And that second time,
how do you find it?’
TROU: ‘As bears my fated lot.’
PAN: ‘But come on. Seriously now. Has it turned out well for you?’
TROU: ‘That is likely.’
PAN: ‘Come on, for God’s sake! By the burden of Saint Christopher, I’d as soon undertake to get a fart out of a dead donkey as a decision out of you. I shall get you this time though. Our loyal liege-man! Tell truth and shame the devil: have you ever been cuckolded? I mean you – you here, not some other you down there on the tennis-court!’
TROU: ‘No. Unless it were so predestined.’
PAN: ‘By the flesh, I deny! [By the blood, I jib; by the body] I give up. He’s getting away.’
At those words Gargantua arose and said:
‘Our good God be praised in all things. As far as I can see the world has grown quite smart since I first knew it. So this is where we’ve got? Have all the most learned and wise philosophers of today joined the school – that is, the phrontistery – of the Pyrrhonists, Aporetics, Sceptics and Ephectics? Praise be to God in his goodness! From henceforth you can catch lions by the mane, [horses by the fringe,] oxen by the horn, buffaloes by the snout, wolves by the tail, goats by the beard, birds by the foot; but never such philosophers by their words.
‘Farewell, my good friends.’
So saying, he withdrew from the company. Pantagruel and the others wanted to escort him, but he would not allow it.
Once Gargantua had gone out of the hall, Pantagruel said to the guests:
‘Plato’s friend Timaeus counted the guests at the beginning of their meeting: we on the contrary will count them at the end. One, two, three. Where’s the fourth? Our friend Bridoye, is it not?’ Epistemon replied that he himself had gone to his house to invite him but he did not find him in. An usher from the Myrelinguian Parlement in Myrelingues had already cited and arraigned him to appear in person to justify before the senators a sentence which he had pronounced. For that reason he had already left the previous morning so as to present himself in person on the day assigned and not to be in default or fall into contumacy.
‘I would like to hear more about that,’ said Pantagruel. ‘He has been a judge at Fonsbeton for more than forty years. During that period he has pronounced over four thousand definitive judgements. Two thousand three hundred and nine of those pronounced by him were subject to an appeal before the Sovereign Court of the Myrelinguian Parlement in Myrelingues by the parties condemned. All of those judgements were ratified, approved and confirmed by decisions of that court and the appeals overturned and quashed. That he, old as he is, should now be summoned to appear in person – he who, all that time, has lived so piously in his vocation – can only be attributable to something ill-starred. I wish to help him with all my might to get a fair hearing.
‘I know that the malign forces of this world have grown so much worse that nowadays a good case has need of aid, and I intend to apply myself to it at once for fear of being taken by surprise.’
And so the cloths were removed. Pantagruel bestowed precious and worthwhile gifts on his guests – rings, jewels, vessels of gold or of silver – and, then, having heartily thanked them, withdrew to his rooms.
How Pantagruel persuades Panurge to take advice from a fool
CHAPTER 37
[Was originally Chapter 36.
That Panurge is ‘lolling’ his head is proof that he is a fool of the wrong sort. (Compare Gargantua when badly educated, and contrast the prophetic ‘jerking’ of Triboullet’s head in Chapter 45.)
Christian folly is about to come into its own. Prophesying is a gift of God (I Corinthians 12). It is a matter of grace, but people can make themselves apt to receive that gift. The Christian fool despises the things of this world but is considered wise by the Celestial Intelligences (the highest rank of angels to concern themselves with human beings). The true spiritual fool, by forgetting himself, may be inspired, caught away in prophetic rapture.
The tale of The Cook, the Smeller, and the Fool Who Judges was one well-known to legal scholars and cited in law-books, including by Tiraqueau in The Laws of Marriage (naming the same authorities as Rabelais).
Three of the adages of Erasmus are relevant: I, III, LXVIII, ‘A mouse tasting pitch’; I, III, I, ‘Either a fool or a king should be born’, and II, IX, LXIV, ‘More foolish than Coroebus’.]
As Pantagruel withdrew he saw from the gallery Panurge in the attitude of a mad dotard, lolling his head and doting. He said to him:
‘To me you look like a mouse caught in pitch: the more it struggles to be free of it, the more bespattered it gets. You, likewise, striving to free yourself from the snares of perplexity are more caught up in them than before. I know of no remedy save one. Listen: I have often heard the popular saying, “The fool may well teach the wise.” Since you have not been fully satisfied by the answers of the wise, seek counsel from a fool. It could well be that in doing so you will be more agreeably pleased and satisfied. So many princes, kings and states, you know, have been saved by the advice, counsel and auguries of fools, so many battles have been won, so many perplexities resolved. No need to recall the exempla: you will acquiesce in this reasoning: just as the one who keeps a close watch on his private and family affairs, who is alert and attentive to the management of his own household, whose mind never wanders, who never lets slip an occasion for acquiring goods or amassing wealth and who cleverly avoids the distresses of poverty, you dub worldly wise despite his being daft in the judgement of the Celestial Intelligences: so, to be wise in their sight – I mean wise and forewise by divine inspiration and capable of receiving the gift of prophecy – a man must forget himself, sally outside himself, void his senses of every earthly affection, purge his mind of all human anxiety and treat all his affairs as indifferent: which is popularly attributed to folly.
‘That was why the great soothsayer Faunus (the son of Picus, the King of the Latins) came to be called Fatuellus (Buffoon) by the ignorant mob.
[‘And that is why we see, at the distribution of parts between the strolling players, the role of the fool or jester is always taken by the most skilled and accomplished actor in the troupe. And that is why the mathematical astrologers say that the same configuration of the heavens obtains at the birth of kings and of the feeble-minded, citing the example of Coroebus (a fool, according to Euphorion) and Aeneas, who both shared the same horoscope.]
‘I shall not stray off course if I relate what Johannes Andrea wrote apropos of a canon in a certain papal rescript addressed to the mayor and citizens of La Rochelle (and later repeated by Panormitanus on the same canon, as well as by Barbatia on the Pandects and recently by Jason de Maino, Caillette’s great-grandpapa.
‘The case stood thus.
‘In Paris, at the area of the Petit Châtelet where meats are roasted, a porter’s boy, in front of the booth of a certain roasting-cook was eating his bread to the smell of the roast and found his bread thus flavoured to be hugely delicious. The cook allowed him to do so, but in the end, once all the bread was gobbled up, he grabbed the boy by the collar and tried to make him pay him for the smell of his roast. The porter’s boy said he had in no way harmed his meats; he had taken nothing of his and owed him nothing. The smell in question was wafting away outside and so was lost in any case. It was unheard of that anyone in Paris could sell in the street the smell of a roast! The cook retorted that he was not obliged to feed porter’s boys on the smell of roast meat, and swore oaths to the effect that if the lad refused to pay up he would confiscate his porter’s hooks. The boy pulled out his stave and prepared to defend himself. Great was the altercation. From all parts of Paris the stupid mob came running up to watch the quarrel.
‘There, most felicitously, stood the fool Seigny Johan, a citizen of Paris. The roasting-cook saw him and asked the porter’s boy: “Would you trust this noble Seigny Johan over our disagreement?”
‘“Gosh, yes,” replied the porter’s boy.
‘And so, Seigny Johan, having heard their opposin
g cases, ordered the porter’s boy to take a silver coin out of his purse, and the lad placed a phillipus in his hand. Seigny Johan took it and put it upon his left shoulder as if to discover whether it was of the right weight; he then tapped it against the palm of his left hand, as though to hear whether it was of good alloy; he then placed it close up against the ball of his right eye, as if to see whether it had been well minted. All of which was done amidst the deep silence of the gazing mob, with the roast-meat man confidently waiting and the porter’s boy full of despair. Eventually the fool rang the coin several times on the stall. Then, with the majesty of a presiding judge and while holding his bauble in his hand as though it were a sceptre, he donned his fool’s cap (which imitated fine fur but had ear-flaps of paper encircled by an organ-pipe ruff), gave two or three fine prefatory coughs and then loudly said:
‘“The Court decides that the porter’s boy who ate his bread to the smell of the roast has, in accordance with Civil Law, duly paid the roast-meat man with the ringing of his coin. The Court now commands that all go home, each to his each-one-ery. No order for costs. The Court rises.”
‘That judgement by the Parisian fool appeared so equitable, so amazing to the scholars that they doubt, if the case had been judged by the local Parlement [, the Roman Rotta] or even the Areopagus, that it would have been more judiciously settled. So think about taking counsel from a fool.’
How Triboullet is blazoned by Pantagruel and by Panurge
CHAPTER 38
[Was originally Chapter 37.
A chapter for informed laughter. Triboullet was a real person, a fool at the Court of France. He lived under Louis XII and François I.
In the two blasons Pantagruel attributes to Triboullet qualities which can be recognized as good and positive, whilst Panurge, as one would expect, gives him qualities which, on the whole, do not find favour in the eyes of Pantagruelists.
Bonadies was an Arcadian god and Bonadea, the Great Mother, a goddess of fertility.]
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