The physicians explained that they deduced the above from the hypostases and enaioremata in the four barrelfuls of urine he had voided on two occasions that morning.
To treat him they used various remedies according to their Art: but the illness was stronger than their remedies so that the noble Bringuenarilles had passed away that morning in a manner so curious that you should no longer be astounded by the death of Aeschylus, to whom it had been predicted as his fate by the soothsayers that he would die on one specified day from the dropping upon him of some falling object. On that fated day he put a distance between himself and the town and all houses, trees, cliffs and other things which could fall and inflict an injury on him as they did so. So he remained in the middle of a spacious field, putting his trust in the clear open sky and feeling perfectly secure, unless the very heavens were actually to fall upon him something he thought to be impossible).
And yet men say that the larks have a great dread of the collapse of the heavens, for if the heavens fell down they would all be trapped.
The Celts dwelling by the Rhine also dreaded it in days of yore. They are now the noble, valiant, chivalrous, warrior-like and victorious French.
Questioned by Alexander the Great about what they most feared in this world [– he was hoping that, out of respect for his great prowesses, victories, conquests and triumphs they would make an exception for him alone –] they replied39 that they feared nothing save the collapse of the heavens [; they would nevertheless not refuse an alliance, confederation and friendship with so brave and great-souled a king (if you believe Strabo in Book 7 and Arrian in Book 1).
Plutarch, too, in the book which he wrote On that Face which appears on the surface of the Moon, speaks of a man called Phenaces, who, greatly fearing that the moon might collapse on to the Earth, felt deep pity and commiseration for the peoples dwelling directly underneath her such as the Ethiops and the Taprobanians, lest so great a mass should fall upon them. He would also have been afraid for both the heavens and the Earth as well had they not been adequately supported and upheld by the pillars of Atlas, as the Ancients opined (as Aristotle bears witness in Book 5 of his Metaphysics)].
All the same, Aeschylus was killed when the shell of a tortoise was dropped from the claws of an eagle flying high in the air; it fell on his head and split his cranium.
– Add the poet Anacreon, who choked on a grape-seed and died;
– add Fabius, the Roman Praetor who died from a goat’s hair in the bowl of milk he was drinking;
– add that embarrassed man who [held back his wind and] suddenly died from the suppression of a wretched fart in the presence of the Emperor Claudius;
– add that man who is buried in Rome along the Flaminian Way who laments in his epitaph that he died from a cat-bite on his little finger;
[– add Quintus Lecanius Bassus, who died suddenly from the prick of a needle on his left thumb, a prick so small it could hardly be seen;]
– add Quenelault, a physician from Normandy, who died suddenly at Montpellier from the slanting cut he made with a pen-knife when prising a flesh-worm from his hand;40
[– add Philomenes, for whom his servant-boy, having prepared some fresh figs as a first course for his dinner, put them down and went off to fetch the wine; meanwhile an amply balled donkey ambled in and immediately consumed them; Philomenes then arrived and closely noted the graciousness of that figo-phagic beast and said to the servant-boy when he came. back, ‘Reason commands that, since you abandoned these figs to that devout donkey you should also produce for it some of that good wine you have brought in!’ Having uttered those words he became so merry of mind that he burst out into such enormous and sustained guffawing that the strain on his spleen cut off his breath and he suddenly died.]
– add Spurius Saufeius, who died while slurping down a soft-boiled egg as he came out of his bath;
[– add that man who, Boccaccio says, suddenly died from picking his teeth with a twig of sage;
– add Philippot Placud,
who, ’tis said,
Fit and well and fully fed,
Suddenly crumpled down quite dead,
without any previous illness: he was simply paying off an old debt;
– add Zeusis the artist, who suddenly died of laughing while looking at the grimacing portrait of an old woman whom he had painted;]
– add all the others which may be told to you by anyone including Verrius, Pliny, Valerias, Battista Fulgosa or Bacabery l’aisné.41
Our good fellow Bringuenarilles, while eating a pat of fresh butter by order of the physicians, died alas of suffocation close to the mouth of a hot oven.
There we were also told that the King of Cullan-en-Bohu had defeated the satraps of King Mechloth and sacked the fortresses of Belima. We subsequently sailed by the islands of Nargues and Zargues; and also of Teleniabin and Geneliabin, which were beautiful and fecund in materials for clysters. And also Enig and Evig, which produced such a backlash for the Landgrave of Hesse.42
How Pantagruel escaped from a mighty storm at sea
CHAPTER 18
[In’48 this was Chapter 8.
We now leave fantasy for laughter at the Council of Trent (Chésil) and its supporters (presented as members of religious Orders). Panurge becomes the model of fear and superstition, a role he will keep until the end. ‘Chésil’ (Hebrew Kesil) means ‘fool’.
Rabelais took his ‘kataigides’ (violent winds), ‘thuellai’ (stormy gusts), ‘lailapes’ (whirlwinds) and ‘presteres’ (meteors) straight from Aristotle’s De Mundo, 4, 2, barely Gallicizing them.
In the penultimate paragraph, where there now appears ‘zalas’ (that is, a form of ‘alas’ in the dialect of Saintonge) the text of 1548 read ‘Jarus’. (Jarus was the Parisian dialect form of Jesus. (The changes are vital but are not individually noted. Jarus is once struck out: after ‘Be be be: bous bous’ and every other time that it appeared in 1548 it is replaced in ‘52 by ‘zalas’.
Panurge typically confounds the Virgin Mary with God, or at least makes her equal to him. ‘All is verlor’ bi Gott’, that is, ‘Alies ist verloren bei Gott’ (‘All is lost, by God’) was the cry often attributed to Swiss mercenaries.
‘O! Thrice and four times blessed’, cited more than once by Rabelais, comes from the cry of distress of Aeneas in Aeneid, 1, 94.]
The following day we crossed on our starboard bow nine carracks laden with monks, Jacobins, Jesuits, Capuchins, Hermits, Augustinians, Bernardines, Celestines, Theatines, Egnatines, Amadeans, Cordeliers, Carmelites, Minims and other holy Religious43 who were sailing to the Council of Chésil to sieve through the articles of the Faith against the new heretics.
On seeing them, Panurge entered into an exceeding joy, [as though assured of finding good fortune on that day and the following days in long succession] and having courteously greeted the blessèd Fathers and commended the salvation of his soul to their devotional prayers and minor intercessions, he caused there to be slung aboard their ships three score-and-eighteen hams, lots of caviar,44 dozens of Saveloys, hundreds of dried salted mullet-roes and two thousand handsome angel-crowns, for the souls of the departed.
Pantagruel remained all thoughtful and melancholy. Frère Jean noticed it, and was asking him the origin of such an unaccustomed gloom when the pilot, having studied the way the pennant on the poop was jerking about and foreseeing a severe squall and a new-formed tempest, called out for everybody to be on the alert: officers, matelots, ship’s boys and us passengers. He struck the sails: mizzen-sail, mizzen-topsail, lugsail, mainsail, lower-after-square-sail and spritsail; he had the men furl in the topsails, foretop and maintop and lower the great storm-mizzen, leaving aloft none of the yards save the ratlings and the shrouds.
All of a sudden the sea began to heave and roar up from the deep; the huge waves beat broadside against our vessels; a Nor’easter, accompanied by a frenetic hurricane, black squalls, terrifying whirlwinds and deadly gusting cyclones, came whistling through our yards. The
heavens roared above us, thundering, lightning, raining and hailing; the air lost its translucency and grew opaque, dark and murky so that no light reached us save from thunder-flashes, lightning and breaks in the fiery clouds; all around us there flamed kataigides, thuellai, lailapes and presteres with their flashes and their streaks of forked and sheet lightning and other aerial discharges; all sightings of the stars were confused and obscured; horrifying whirlwinds sucked up the mountainous waves as they flowed in. It seemed to us, as you can well believe, like that Chaos of old where fire, air, sea, land and all the elements were in jarring confusion.
Panurge, having thoroughly fed the scatophagous fish with the contents of his stomach, stayed crouching down on the deck, thoroughly miserable, quite wretched and half-dead. He invoked to his aid all the blessed saints, male and female, asseverating that he would make his confession in due time and place.45 He then cried out in great terror, ‘Chief Steward! Ho! My friend, my father, my uncle! Serve up the salty bits! I can see that we shall soon have all too much to drink! From now on my device shall be, Little food, lots of drink. Would to God [and to the Blessèd, worthy and sacred Virgin that now – I mean at this very minute –] I was on terra- firma, thoroughly at my ease.
‘O! Thrice and four times blessèd are those who plant cabbages. O Fatal Sisters, why did you not spin me the thread of a planter of cabbages? O, how small is the number of those whom Jupiter has so favoured as to be destined to plant out cabbages: for they always have one foot on the ground and the other not far above it. Let him who will debate of felicity and the sovereign good; but by my decree whoever plants cabbages is here and now pronounced to be truly blessèd, with far more reason than Pyrrho had, who when in such danger as we are now, and seeing a pig near the shore which was eating some scattered barley, pronounced it most blessèd in two respects: namely, that it had barley in plenty and, moreover, was on the shore.
‘Ha! For a God-given and lordly dwelling there is nothing like good old cow-trodden earth! Servator God! That wave is going to swamp us! O, my friends: give me a little vinegar. I’m all of a sweat from the strain. Zalas! The halyards have parted; our head-rope has shattered; our cable-rings have split asunder; the yard by the crow’s nest is plunging into the sea; our keel is exposed to the heavens; our cables are nearly all broken. Zalas! Zalas! Where are our topsails? All is verlor’ bi Gott. Our topmast is in rack and ruin. Zalas! Whom will this wreck belong to? My friends! Lend me back here one of those spars from the foc’s’le-rail. Lads! Your cordage has buckled! Zalas! Don’t abandon the tiller; nor the guide-lines either! I can hear a pintle straining on the rudder. Has it given way? Let’s save those trusses, for God’s sake. Don’t worry about the gun-stays. Be be be: bous bous. Please, please check from the needle of your compass, Master Astrophile, the direction this hurricane is coming from!
[‘By my faith I’m truly frightened. Bou, bou, bou, bou, bous. I’m finished. I am messing myself from a frenzy of fear. Bou, bou, bou, bou. Otto to to to to ti. Otto to to to to ti.46 Bou, bou, bou; ou, ou, ou; bou, bou, bous, bous. I’m drowning; drowning. I’m dying. Good folks, I’m drowning.’]
How Panurge and Frère Jean comported themselves during the storm
CHAPTER 19
[A superb example of a fable or parable (in ‘48) turned into a directly Evangelical lesson in ‘52. There is a sustained contrast between Panurge’s use of passive pious formulas as magic charms and Frère Jean’s cursing and swearing, which is allied to active virtue.
Throughout this chapter the ‘Jams’ of ‘48 continues to become the ‘zalas’ of ‘52. The changes, whilst most important, are not individually noted in the variants: they apply every time.
There is no space at all between Candes et Monssoreau, two contiguous villages in Rabelais’ pays. That fact gave rise to the local jingle cited in the text.]
Pantagruel, [having first implored the aid of our Servator God and offered public prayers in fervent devotion,] on the advice of the pilot held the mast steady and firm. Frère Jean had stripped down to his doublet in order to help the seamen. So too, Epistemon, Ponocrates and the others. Panurge remained with his bum on the deck, yelling and wailing. Frère Jean noticed him as he went along the gallery and said to him, ‘By God! Panurge the little bovine! Panurge the cry-baby! Panurge the blubberer! You’d be better off helping us over here than bellowing like a cow and squatting on your bollocks like a Barbary baboon.’
‘Be, be, be, bous, bous,’ Panurge replied, ‘Frère Jean, my dear friend, my good Padre, I’m drowning: drowning, dear friend, drowning. I’ve had it, my spiritual Counsellor; had it, my friend. Your broad-sword can never save me from this! Zalas, zalas! We’ve shot above top doh, right off the scale. Bebe, bous, bous, zalas! And now we’re way below bottom doh! I’m drowning, Ha! Father! Uncle! My All! Water’s got into my shoes through the uppers. Bous, bous, bous, atishoo, ha, ha, ha, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. I’m drowning. Zalas, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Be, be, bous, bous, bobous, bobous, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! Zalas, zalas! I’m doing hand-stands like a forked tree, feet up, head down. Would to God that I were, at this present time, in the carrack of the good and blessèd concilipetary Fathers we met this forenoon (so devout, so portly, so merry, [so cuddly] and of such good grace). Zalas, zalas! Our ship is going to be swamped by that bloody wave – mea culpa Deus, I mean that holy wave of God. – Zalas, Frère Jean, my Padre, my beloved friend: let me make my confession! Here I am on bended knees. I confess to thee, Father… Give me your holy blessing.’
‘In the name of thirty legions of devils come here and help us, you damn gallows-fodder!’ said Frère Jean. ‘Come on. Will he come, or…?’
‘Don’t let’s swear,’ said Panurge, ‘not just now, my Father and friend. Tomorrow as much as you like. Holos! holos. Zalas! Our ship is taking in water. I’m drowning. Zalas, zalas! Be, be, be, be, be, bous, bous, bous, bous. Now we really have struck the bottom. Zalas, zalas! I will bestow eighteen hundred thousand crowns a year on anyone who sets me ashore, all dirty and beshitten though I am, if ever man were so in my beshatten land – I confess to thee… Zalas! [Just a word or two to make my will. Or at least a codicil.]’
‘May a thousand devils vault into the body of this cuckold,’ said Frère Jean. God almighty! Are you talking of wills at a moment like this47 when we are in peril and must – now or never – exert ourselves! Hey, you devil: are you coming or not?
‘Hie! Boatswain, me beauty! Hie, noble alguazil! Over here, Gymnaste, up here on the poop. [Good God: with this wave, we’ve had it! It’s doused our navigation light! Everything’s going to all the millions of devils.’
‘Zalas, zalas!’ said Panurge. ‘Zalas. Bou, bou, bou, bous. Was it here that we were predestined to drown? Holos, good folk. I’m drowning; dying. It is finished! I’m done for.’
‘Magna, gna, gna,’ said Frère Jean. ‘Ugh! How ugly he is, that snivelling shit.] Hey! cabin-boy! Look to the pump-house; by all the devils. Are you injured? God almighty, hang on to one of those bollards. Round there, in the devil’s name. That’s right, my lad.’
‘Ah! Frère Jean,’ said Panurge, ‘let us not swear, my spiritual Father and friend. Thou sinnest. Zalas, zalas! Be, be, be, bous, bous, bous: I’m drowning, my friends, I’m dying. I forgive you all. Adieu. Into Thy hands, O Lord…; bous, bous, bouououous. Saint Michel d’Aure! Saint Nicholas! Just this once, and never again. I hereby vow to you both and to Our Lord that if you come to my aid in this strife – I mean if you set me ashore out of this present danger – I’ll build you a lovely big little chapel or two,
’Twixt Candes and Monssoreau (take heed!)
Where never cow nor calf can feed.
Zalas, zalas! I’ve swallowed some eighteen bucketfuls or two of water! Bous, bous, bous, bous: how bitter and salty it is.’
‘Virtues of the blood, flesh, belly and head!’ said Frère Jean, ‘if I ever hear you snivelling again, I shall wallop you like a fish-eating wolf. God almighty! Why don’t we just chuck him down to the bottom of the deep? Hey.
Leading Oarsman! O, O, my noble fellow. Just so my friend, cling on tight up there. Here’s real thunder and lightning for you. I believe all Hell’s been let loose, or else Proserpine’s in labour. And all the devils are jingling a morris-dance.’
[How the seamen let their ship run before the wind at the height of the storm]
CHAPTER 20
[There is no chapter-break here in ‘48.
‘Cabirotade’ is a goat-meat stew, considered a desiccative and a thirst-raiser.
The jest on the French name of Herodotus (Hérodote + Il radote is sport at the expense of etymologies as found in the Cratylus, which are elsewhere taken very seriously in the Fourth Book.
Again ‘Jarus’ is dropped or replaced by ‘zalas’.
The addition to the first paragraph, ‘I am nought’, lends a Classical ring to the story. Nullus sum (I am nought) is an adage of Erasmus (I, III, XLIV), where we are told that it is an hyperbole found in Euripides and Plato and used when one is in danger of perishing.]
‘Ah!’ said Panurge. ‘You, Frère Jean, are committing a sin, my former friend: [former I say, for I am nought: you are nought.] It grieves me to say so since I believe that swearing is very good for your spleen, just as a man splitting timber is greatly comforted if someone nearby grunts ugh! at every stroke he makes, and just as a player at ninepins is amazingly comforted, whenever he has failed to bowl straight, if some bright soul near by him twists his neck and half-turns his body towards the direction in which the bowl would have run if it had been properly thrown to hit the skittles. Nevertheless, you are still sinning, my dear old friend.48
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