Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  ‘You can see, behind us here towards the Tyrrhenian Sea and the environs of the Apennines, what tragedies are provoked by certain pastophors. Such madness will last out its time like the ovens of Limoges. Eventually it will end, though not all that soon. That will provide us with quite a pastime. But I can see one drawback: we have only a small arsenal of thunderbolts ever since you, my fellow gods, by my special permission, showered them on to New Antioch for fun, just as those foppish champions who, following your example, swore to defend the fortress of Dindenarois against all comers squandered their munitions in shooting at ravelins. And so, having nothing to defend themselves with in their hour of need, they gallantly gave up the fort and surrendered to their enemies, who, mad with despair, were about to lift their siege, having no thought more pressing than how to retreat with the minimum of opprobrium.

  ‘See to it all, Vulcan, my son. Wake up the slumbering Cyclopses – Asterope, Brontes, Arge, Polyphemus, Sterope and Pyracmon – set them to work and make them match drink for drink. Skimp not the wine for workers with fire! And let us dispatch that yeller down yonder. Go and see who it is, Mercury, and find out what he wants.’

  Mercury goes and looks through the trap-door of the heavens (by which they listen to what: is said on Earth here below and which actually resembles the booby-hatch of a ship: Icaromenippus said it looks like the mouth of a well).

  Seeing Bollux there, who wants his lost axe, he reports back to the council.

  ‘Truly now,’ said Jupiter; a fine thing I must say! Have we no other item on the agenda but the returning of lost axes! We shall have to give it to him, though. That, you see, is inscribed in Destiny just as much as if it were worth the Duchy of Milan. It is in truth as highly prized and valued by him as his realm is to a monarch. All right! All right! Let that axe be returned. Let there be no more talk about it. Let’s resolve that quarrel between the secular clergy and the moles of Landerousse. Where had we got to?’

  Priapus remained bolt upright in the chimney-corner. On hearing Mercury’s report he said with all courtesy and a jovial frankness:

  ‘King Jupiter: during the period when, by your command and special grace, I stood as guardian in the gardens on Earth, I noted that the term coignée (axe) is equivocal, having several meanings. Coignée can signify a certain tool by the use of which timber is cloven and chopped down. It can also signify (or at least it used to signify) the female frequently and duly jiggedy jogged. And I noted that every good companion called his own girlie his coignée. For with such a tool (and so saying he displayed his nine-inch knocker) the men wedged themselves so tightly and boldly into the eyes of their sockets that the females remained free from a fear, epidemic amongst the feminine sex: to wit, that without such a buckling their sockets might tumble down to their heels from their bellies. And, since I have a lovely big mentula – I mean mental capacity: enough to fill a butter-pot – I remember that one day in May, during the festivities at the Tubilustra of that good fellow Vulcan, I once heard Josquin des Prés, Ockeghem, Obrecht, Agricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris, Seguin, De la Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compère, Penet, Fevin, Rosée, Richafort, Rousseau, Conseil, Costanzo Festa and Jacques Berchem melodiously singing this song on a beautiful lawn:

  Tubby Tibault wished soon to lie

  With his fond wife but newly wed;

  He did not want her to espy

  A mallet, large, placed near the bed.

  “O lover dear!” his sweeting said,

  “What means that mallet hidden nigh?”

  “To ram me right in by and by!”

  “No mallet,” said she, “needs my tum.

  “When Fat John comes to me, O My!

  He batters only with his bum!”

  Nine Olympiads and one intercalated year later – oh, I do have a good mentula (I mean mental capacity: I’m always being solecistic over the concordance and interconnection of those two words!) – I heard Adrian Willaert, Gombert, Jannequin, Arcadelt, Claudin, Certon, Manchicourt, Auxerre, Villiers, Sandrin, Sohier, Hesdin, Morales, Passereau, Maille, Maillart, Jacotin, Heurteur, Verdelot, Carpentras, Lhéritier, Cadéac, Doublet, Vermont, Bouteiller, Lupi, Pagnier, Millet, Du Moulin, Alaire, Marault, Morpain, Gendre and other merry music-makers all singing in a secluded garden under fair leafy boughs fenced about with a rampart of flagons, hams, pasties and divers well-coiffured Peggy-Partridges:

  The empty socket in a helve-less head

  Is useless quite, a rake without its pole;

  One in the other you must tightly bed.

  I’ll play the helve, and bed it in that hole.

  But we still need to know what sort of axe that bellowing Bollux is asking for.’

  At which words the venerable gods and goddesses all broke out into laughter like a microcosm of flies. Vulcan, for the love of his lady, made three or four fine little jumps in a hop-along style on his gammy leg. ‘Come on,’ said Jupiter to Mercury; ‘get down there at once and cast three axes at Bollux’s feet: his own; another of solid gold and a third of solid silver, all of the same calibre.

  ‘Give him the chance to choose.

  ‘If he takes his own and is satisfied with it, give him the other two. If he takes either of the others, chop off his head with his own. And from now on, do the same with all such losers of axes.’

  Having finished with those words, Jupiter contorted his head like a monkey swallowing pills and pulled such a horrible face that the whole of mighty Mount Olympus quaked.

  Mercury, with his pointed cap, his cape, his anklets and his caduceus, jumped through the trapdoor of Heaven, clove the aerial void, alighted gently upon Earth, cast the three axes at Bollux’s feet and said to him, ‘You deserve a drink after all that bellowing! Your prayers have been answered by Jupiter. See which of these three axes is your own and take it away.’

  Bollux lifted up the axe of gold. He stared at it and found it very heavy. He then said to Mercury, ‘’Pon my zole, that bain’t moine. Don’t want thickee.’ He did the same to the silver one, saying, ‘Not thackee. You can ’ave ’im.’ Then he took up the woodcutter’s axe: he looked at the base of the helve and recognized his mark; then, quivering with joy like a fox coming across stray hens, he said, smiling to the tip of his nose, ‘Mudder of God: this one’s moine! If you’ll leave ‘im with me, I’ll sacrifice a lovely big pot of milk to you, covered with a layer of nice strewberries at the Ides’ – that is, the fifteenth day – ‘of May.’

  ‘My good fellow,’ said Mercury, ‘I leave it with you. Take it. And because you have opted and wished for the Mean in the matter of axes, at the behest of Jupiter I give you the two others. From now on you have enough to be rich. Be a good man.’

  Bollux courteously thanks Mercury, worships great Jupiter, and clips his venerable axe on to his leathern belt, girding it over his bum like Martin de Cambrai. The two other heavier ones he carries over his shoulder. Then he processes prelate-like through the locality, cutting a fine figure amongst his neighbours and fellow parishioners, repeating that little phrase of Pathelin’s: ‘Done well, haven’t I!’

  Next day, wearing a white smock, he loads his two precious axes on to his back and betakes himself to Chinon, a famous town, a noble town, an ancient town, indeed, the best town in the world according to the verdict and assertion of the learned Masoretes. In Chinon he exchanges his silver axe for lovely testoons and other silver coins, and his golden one for lovely Annunciation-crowns, lovely long-fleeced Agnus-Dei, lovely Dutch Ritters, lovely Royals and lovely Sun-crowns. With them he buys a great many farms, a great many barns, a great many holdings, a great many tenancies, a great many fields and a great many domains, meadows, vines, woodlands, arable lands, pasture-lands, ponds, mills, gardens, willow-groves; bulls, cows, ewes, sheep, goats, sows, pigs, asses, horses; hens, cocks, capons, pullets, geese, ganders, chicks, drakes and various small farm-birds. And in no time he was the richest man around – why, richer than lame old Maulévrier!

  Now
the substantial yeomen and the clod-hopping Jacks noted Bollux’s happy encounter and were struck with amazement; within their minds the pity and commiseration which they had formerly felt for him were changed into envy of his wealth, so great and unexpected. And so they began to dash around to inquire, find out and discover in what place, on which day, at what hour, how and under what circumstances such great treasure had come to him. On learning that it came from the losing of his axe, they said, ‘Aha! To become rich we only have to lose an axe, do we! The means is easy: the outlay, trivial. The revolution of the spheres, the disposition of the stars and the aspects of the planets are now such (are they?) that whosoever his axe shall lose immediately so rich shall be! Hmm! Hee, hee! Axe of mine, you shall be lost, if you don’t mind.’

  Whereupon they all lost their axes. Any man who kept one could go to the devil. For lack of axes no more trees were felled nor timber chopped in all the land.

  That Aesopic fable goes on to say that certain little bas-relief Rack-rents amongst the local Spentry (who had sold Bollux this little meadow or that little mill so as to cut a figure at the revue of the train-bands), when once informed how such treasure had thus come to Bollux and by what singular means, sold their swords to buy axes in order to lose them like their peasants, and so acquire by that loss a mountain of gold and silver. (You could easily have taken them for Rushers-to-Rome, selling their goods and borrowing from others in order to buy piles of mandates-to-benefices from a new-made pope.) And then they yelled and prayed and lamented and invoked Jupiter: ‘My axe, my axe, O Jupiter! My axe here: my axe there: O! O! O! My axe!’

  The ambient air resounded with the cries and howls of those losers of axes.

  Mercury was prompt in bringing axes to them; to each he offered his own lost one, another of silver and third one of gold. They all chose the one made of gold and went to pick it up. But, the very instant that they stooped and bent over to lift it from the ground, Mercury – in accordance with the edict of Jupiter – lopped off their heads. And the severed heads were equal and equivalent in number to the axes which were lost. Well: there it is. There you have what happens to those who innocently wish and opt for things within the Mean.

  Learn from that example all you lowland nags who swear that you wouldn’t write off your wishes even for an income of ten thousand francs. From now on do not talk with such impudence as I sometimes hear you do when you wish, ‘Would to God I had, here and now, one hundred and seventy-eight millions in gold! Oh how I would strut about!’ Chilblains to you! What more could a king, an emperor, a pope wish for? And you know from experience that, after you’ve made such outrageous wishes, all you get is foot-rot and the scab, and not one farthing in your purse, no more than those two beggarly wish-makers who followed the Use of Paris: one of them wished to have as much wealth in lovely Sun-crowns as had been expended, bought and sold in Paris since the first foundations were laid for its construction until this present hour, everything to be reckoned according to the rates, costs and prices of the dearest year occurring during that lapse of time. Had that fellow lost his appetite do you think! Had he eaten sour plums without peeling them? Were his teeth set on edge?

  The other wished the shrine of Notre-Dame to be crammed full of sharp-pointed needles from the pavement to the apex of the vaulting, and to have all the Sun-crowns that could be stuffed into all the sacks that could be sewn by each and every needle until all were broken or blunted. There’s wishing for you! And what do you think happened? That evening both of them had,

  Upon his heels a calloused skin;

  A painful tumour on his chin;

  A nasty cough his lungs within;

  Catarrh producing wheezings thin;

  A bum-sore to a boil akin,

  and not the devil of a crust to pick his teeth with.

  Wish for the Mean and it will come to you, all the more so if you then duly work away and toil.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ you say, ‘but God could have just as easily given me seventy-eight thousand crowns as the thirteenth part of a halfpenny. He’s almighty. A million in gold is as little to him as a silver penny.’

  Hey, hey, hey! And who taught you poor wretches to speak and discourse about the power and predestination of God? Be quiet: st, st, st. Humble yourselves before his sacred face and acknowledge your imperfections.7

  The Genoese do not act thus each morning when (after having, discussed, schemed, and decided in their counting-houses and cabinets from whom and from what kind of folk they will be able to squeeze out money, and who shall be diddled, swindled, cheated and duped by their cunning) go out into the piazza and greet each other with Health and wealth, Signor. They’re not satisfied with health: they want gold crowns as well, indeed the gains of the Guadagni!

  From which it results that they often obtain neither.

  Well now: in good health, cough a good cough; have three drinks; merrily shake your ears, and then, you shall hear tell wondrous things about our good and noble Pantagruel.

  How Pantagruel put to sea to visit the oracle of the Dive Bacbuc

  CHAPTER 1

  [The 1548 Fourth Book does not include Eusthenes in the list of Pantagruel’s followers. But it does include Ponocrates, who is omitted here in error.

  In ‘48 the ‘Dive Bouteille’ (the Holy Bottle) is for the first time called ‘Bacbuc’, a Hebrew word taken to represent the sound of liquids being outpoured. In ‘48 Thalamege was called Thelamane.

  The service marking the sailing is Protestant in tone and content. (The 1548 text adds the word ‘common’ before ‘the prayer that is said’.) The Psalm which is sung is number 114, ‘When Israel came out of Egypt’, in the French metrical version of Clément Marot, adopted by the Eglise Réformée. That Psalm is indeed appropriate to navigation. It was also taken as a paean celebrating the freedom of the true Church from its ‘Babylonian captivity’ under Rome. There is no Mass, no priestly blessings as (for example) the future Invincible Armada will have. After the Cardinal de Châtillon had fled to England, he granted licences (letters of marque) to Protestant corsairs, whose religious observances were doubtless much like Pantagruel’s.

  The route to be followed by the ships is not clear and raises controversy. The heroes are going to sail westward and so presumably will find and follow the then topical Northwest Passage. In which case it might seem that ‘larboard’ and ‘starboard’ should here be reversed. But ‘elevation’ (in French and in English) once meant not only the elevation of a star but the latitude from which its reading was taken. Our heroes could be sailing with the latitude-line on one side on the way out, keeping it to the other side on the way back. But it was then thought that the Northwest Passage was part of a continuous strait running round the whole of the North Pole.]

  In the month of June, on the day of the Vestalia – the very day that Brutus conquered Spain and subdued the Spaniards, and when greedy Crassus was overcome and defeated by the Parthians – Pantagruel received his congee from his good father Gargantua who [, following the laudable practice amongst the saintly Christians of the early Church,] was earnestly praying for the success of the voyage of his son. Pantagruel then boarded his ship in the port of Thalasse, accompanied by Panurge, Frère Jean des Entommeures, Epistemon, Gymnaste, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalim and others of his long-serving courtiers and members of his household, together with Xenomanes, the great traveller and Navigator across Perilous Ways, all of whom had arrived a few days beforehand at the summons of Panurge. [Xenomanes had, for certain good reasons, left behind with Gargantua a copy of his great Map of the Seas of the World indicating the course they would maintain to visit the oracle of Bacbuc, the Dive Bouteille.]

  The number of ships is such as I expounded in the Third Book, [under the escort of triremes, swift, slim row-barges, galleons and Liburnian ships-of-war in equal number,] all well equipped, well caulked, and well provisioned with an abundance of pantagruelion.

  The muster of all the officers, interpreters, pilots, [captains,] sailors, ordin
ary seamen and ship’s mates was held aboard the Thalamege. That was the name of Pantagruel’s great flag-ship; as an ensign it had on its poop a large and capacious bottle, half of smoothly polished silver, half of gold with flesh-pink enamelling. From which it was easy to deduce that white and claret were the colours of the noble navigators,8 and that they were sailing to have the word of the Dive Bouteille.

  On the poop of the second ship was raised aloft an antiquarian lantern, industriously crafted from [alabaster and] translucent mica, denoting that they would sail via Lantern-land.

  For their devices:

  – the third ship had a deep and beautiful goblet made of porcelain;

  – the fourth, a golden bowl with two handles, as though it was an urn from Classical antiquity;

  – the fifth, a magnificent vase of grained jasper;

  – the sixth, a monkish tankard made of an alloy of four metals;

  – the seventh, a funnel of ebony richly embossed with gold, enhanced by gilt and silver incrustations;

  – the eighth, a most precious, ivy-wood goblet, with beaten gold and damascene inlays;

  – the ninth, a carafe of fine gold purified in the fire;

  – the tenth, a cup of sweet-smelling agalloch (which you know as aloes-wood) interlaced with Cypriot gold decorated in the Persian style;

  – the eleventh, a golden grape-hod with mosaic-work;

  – the twelfth, a matt-gold barrel covered with a vignette formed of large Indian pearls9 set out as in topiary-work.

  And so there was nobody, however gloomy, worried, depressed or melancholic (not even Heraclitus the Sniveller had he been there) who did not burst out into fresh joy and good-humoured smiles on seeing that noble convoy of ships and their devices; nobody who did not say that those voyagers were all stout men and good drinkers; nobody who did not confidently anticipate that their voyage there and back would be achieved in joy and perfect health.