Gargantua and Pantagruel

by François Rabelais

  Frère Jean could not abide the discourse of Catty-claws and said, ‘Hey! You My-lord-the-devil-in-robes, how do you think he can answer a point he knows nothing about! Aren’t you satisfied with the truth?’

  ‘Oh, for Gold’s sake!’ said Catty-claws. ‘Never in all my reign has anyone spoken, for Gold’s sake! without being first interrogated by us. Who untied this crazy loon?’ –

  ‘You are lying,’ muttered Frère Jean without moving his lips.

  – ‘Do you think you are in the groves of Academe, for Gold’s sake! with idle hunters and seekers after Truth! We have better things to do, for Gold’s sake! Here, for Gold’s sake! you give categorical answers about things you do not know. You must, for Gold’s sake! confess to having done things which you, for Gold’s, sake! have not done. You must allege, for Gold’s sake! that you know things you have never been told of. Here, however angry, you must suffer things quietly, for Gold’s sake! Here we pluck the goose, for Gold’s sake! without letting it squeal. You, fellow, speak without procuration: I can see that well enough, for Gold’s sake! And may that nasty quartan fever of yours, for Gold’s sake, marry you, for Gold’s sake!’

  ‘Marry off monks, would you,’ exclaimed Frère Jean, ‘by the devils, arch-devils, proto-devils and pan-devils! Ho, hu; ho, hoo. I take you for a heretic.’

  How Panurge solved the riddle of Catty-claws

  CHAPTER 13

  [The bribes which lawyers and judges openly expected were known as spices (épices). All these legal men love their spices and are avid for gold, not justice.]

  Catty-claws, affecting not to hear that remark, addressed Pan-urge, saying:

  ‘For Gold’s sake, you big-head, for Gold’s sake! Have you got nothing to say, for Gold’s sake?’

  Panurge replied:

  ‘I can clearly see, Good Gold, by the devil! that the plague lurks for us in here, since here, Good Gold by the devil! innocence is not safe and the devil sings Masses. Allow me, I beg you, to pay for the lot, and then let us go, Good Gold by the devil! I can stand no more, Good Gold by the devil!’

  ‘Go?’ said Catty-claws. ‘Why, for the last three hundred years nobody, for Gold’s sake! has ever got away, for Gold’s sake! without leaving his hair behind or more often his hide. Why, for Gold’s sake! that would be tantamount to saying, for Gold’s sake! that the folk brought before us here were unjustly summonsed for Gold’s sake! and unjustly treated. You are wretched enough already for Gold’s sake! but will be even more so, for Gold’s sake! if you fail to solve the riddle propounded to you. What, for Gold’s sake! does it mean?’

  ‘It means, replied Panurge, ‘Good Gold, by the devil! a black weevil born of a white bean via the hole it pierced by its gnawing, Good Gold by the devil! which weevil (Good Gold, by the devil!) sometimes flies, sometimes crawls along the ground. For which – Good gold, by the devil! – it was deemed by Pythagoras, who was the first lover of wisdom (which is what philosopher means in Greek) to have received a human soul by metempsychosis, Good Gold, by the devil! If you fellows were human – Good Gold, by the devil! – your souls after your nasty deaths would, according to his opinion – Good Gold, by the devil! – enter into the bodies of weevils. For in this life you gnaw at everything, eat everything; while in the life to come,

  You will gnaw and eat like vipers

  The very flanks of your mothers.

  Good Gold, by the devil there!’

  ‘Bothy of God!’ said Frère Jean, ‘I could wish with all my heart that the hole in my bum should become such a bean and be nibbled all round by such weevils!’

  Those words once said, Panurge tossed into the middle of the courtroom a fat leather purse stuffed with Sun-crowns. At the chinking of that purse all the Furry-cats began to play on their claws as on out-of-tune fiddles. And they all cried out in a loud voice, ‘Those are our spices! It was a very good lawsuit, well spiced and succulent. These folk are all right.’

  ‘Gold, that is,’ said Panurge. ‘Good Sun-crowns.’

  ‘The Court,’ said Catty-claws, ‘so understands. Good Gold! hmm; Good Gold! hmm; Good Gold! hmm! Off you go, my lads – Good Gold! hmm – and pass Beyond: we are, Good Gold! hmm! more blackish than devilish, Good Gold! hmm, Good Gold! hmm! Good Gold! hmm!’

  Leaving by the wicket-gate, we were conducted as far as the port by certain highland Clawyers. There, before we boarded our ships, they warned us that we could not set sail until we had first bestowed lordly presents on Dame Catty-claws and all the female Furry-cats; otherwise they had been commissioned to march us back to the wicket-gate.

  ‘Pooh!’ said Frère Jean, ‘we shall draw aside and dig into our coffers and make them all happy.’

  ‘But,’ said the serving-lads, ‘don’t forget a tip to buy wine for us poor devils!’

  ‘The wine of poor devils is never forgotten,’ replied Frère Jean. ‘In all lands and in all seasons it is ever remembered.’

  How the Furry-cats live by corruption

  CHAPTER 14

  [In the still-dominant physics of Aristotle, generation and corruption are twin concepts, succeeding each other. For Rabelais in Pantagruel, Chapter 8, they will remain until the end of the Age, when Christ returns his Kingdom to God the Father.]

  Those words were not all out of his mouth before Frère Jean perceived sixty-eight galleys and frigates coming into harbour. At which he quickly ran to ask for news and to learn what merchandise the vessels were laden with. He saw they had a cargo of venison, hares, capons, pigeons, pigs, kids, plovers, pullets, ducks, teal, goslings and other kinds of game. Amongst them he also saw several rolls of cloth: velvet, satin and damask. He asked the seafarers where they were bringing such dainty items from, and to whom. They answered that it was for Catty-claws, the Furry-Toms and the Furry-Tabbies.

  ‘What do you call those soothing things,’ asked Frère Jean.

  ‘Corruption,’ the seafarers replied.

  ‘They live by corruption: they will perish, then, by generation!’ said Frère Jean. ‘By the might of God, this is how things now stand: their forebears gobbled up the good noblemen (who, as befitted their estate, practised hawking and hunting so as to develop their skills for war and be inured to its hardships; for hunting is a simulacrum of war, and Xenophon was simply telling the truth when he wrote that all good leaders in war came forth from hunting as from the Trojan Horse. I’m no scholar but so I’ve been told, and I believe it.) After the death of those noblemen their souls, according to the opinion of Catty-claws, enter into wild boars, stags, roebucks, herons, partridges and other such beasts which they had always liked and hunted during their first lives, so these Furry-cats, once they have ruined and swallowed up the noblemen’s chateaux, lands, demesnes, possessions, rents and revenues, then go after their blood and souls in that other life.

  ‘What a noble beggar that was who warned us of that fact from the sight of their mangers set above the hay-racks.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Panurge to the travellers, ‘but the criers have proclaimed in the name of the Great King that no one, on pain of hanging, should kill stags, does, wild-boars or roebucks.’

  ‘True enough,’ replied one of them on behalf of them all, ‘but the Great King is courteous and kind, whereas those Furry-cats are madly ravenous for christian blood, so we have less to fear from offending the Great King and more to hope for from sustaining the Furry-cats through such corruption, especially since Catty-claws himself is marrying off one of his Furred Tabby-kittens to a gross, well-lined Tom. In days gone by we used to call them mere munchers-of-hay; nowadays we call them munchers of hare, partridge, woodcock, pheasant, pullet, roebuck, rabbit and pork. On no other fodder are they fed.’

  ‘Oh pooh! pooh!!’ said Frère Jean. ‘Next year they shall be termed Turd-munchers, Squitter-munchers, Shit-munchers. Will you trust what I say?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ the band replied.

  ‘Then let us do two things,’ he said. ‘First, let’s appropriate all that game over there. I’m
fed up with salted meats: they overheat my hypochondria. I mean we should pay well for it.

  ‘Secondly: let’s go back to he wicket-gate and strip all those devilish Furry-cats!’

  ‘Without fail I shall not go,’ said Panurge. ‘I am timorous by nature.’

  How Frère Jean des Entommeures plans to strip the Furry-cats

  CHAPTER 15

  [Eurystheus (a grandson of Perseus) was commanded by Juno to impose upon Hercules his twelve labours.

  Jupiter appeared to Semele with thunder and lightning (which killed her).

  The first mother of Bacchus was Semele; his second mother was Jupiter’s thigh, Bacchus having been sewn up in it until he was delivered.

  There are echoes of a widely known saying of Horace, listed in the Adages of Erasmus: II, X, XXV, ‘A wall of brass’.

  Mounts Calpe and Abila are on either side of the straits of Hercules (of Gibraltar).

  The name of the ‘Subtle Doctor’, Duns Scotus, allows of a hidden pun on paying one’s scot.]

  ‘By the power of my cloth,’ said Frère Jean, ‘what sort of voyage are we sailing on here? It’s a voyage of men with the runs! All we do is break wind, fart, defecate, fantasize and do nothing. Body of God! it’s not in my character. Unless I’ve done some heroic deed by day I can’t sleep at nights. Did you bring me along on this voyage as your companion, merely to sing Mass and to hear confessions! Balm Sunday! The first man who comes to me will find that his penance, the nasty coward, is to cast himself into the depths of the sea, in deduction of the pains of purgatory. And I mean head first. What is it that brought fame and eternal renown to Hercules? Was it not that, in the course of his peregrinations through the world, he freed folk from tyrants, errors, dangers and oppression? He put to death all marauders, monsters, poisonous snakes and evil-doing beasts. Why don’t we follow his example and do as he did in all the lands we travel through? He did for the Stymphalides, the Hydra of Lerna, Cacus, Antaeus and the Centaurs. (I’m no scholar but that’s what the scholars say.) In imitation of him let us overthrow these Furry-cats and put them to the sack. They are but tercels of devils; and we shall deliver this land from tyranny. If I were as powerful and strong as Hercules was, why! – I renounce Mahoun! – I shouldn’t be asking you for help or advice! Shall we get going then? We shall easily slay them, I tell you, and I don’t doubt that they will suffer it patiently, seeing that they have patiently swallowed more insults from us than ten sows draining their swill!

  ‘Let them have gold coins in their game-bags, I say, and then they’re never troubled by insults or dishonour, even when drenched in shit. And we doubtless would defeat them, only we lack the order from Eurystheus. At this time that’s all I want, except that I would like to have Jupiter walking amongst them for two tiny hours in the guise he once adopted when visiting Semele, his sweeting, the first of Bacchus’ mothers.’

  ‘God,’ said Panurge, ‘has graciously vouchsafed that you escape from their claws. As for me, I won’t go back. I still feel troubled and upset from the anguish I suffered there. I was greatly vexed there for three reasons. First: because I was vexed. Second: because I was vexed. Third, because I was vexed. Frère Jean, my old left bollock, hearken to this with your right ear: each and every time you would go to all the devils before the judgement-seats of Minos, Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and Dis, I am ready to maintain an unbreakable comradeship with you, crossing the Acheron, Styx and Cocytus, drinking bumperfuls of the waters of Lethe, and paying both our fares for Charon’s barque. But as for that wicket-gate, if you do happen to want to go back there, press into your company someone else but me. I will not go back. Let those words be unto you a wall of brass. Unless I’m dragged there by might and main I shall never draw nigh there, as long as I love this life, no more than Mount Calpe will draw nigh to Abila. Did Hercules go back to fetch the sword he had left in the Cyclops’ cavern? That, by Jove, he did not. I left nothing behind at the wicket-gate: I shall not go back to it.’

  ‘O, what a frank and great-hearted comrade,’ said Frère Jean, ‘one with palsied hands! But let us talk about the paying of your scot, Subtle Doctor. Why did you throw them your purse crammed with crowns? What moved you to it? Did we have too many? Wouldn’t it have sufficed to toss them a few clipped testoons?’

  ‘Because with every phrase that they uttered Catty-claws opened his velvet game-bag and exclaimed, “Good Gold here! Good Gold here! Good Gold here!” From which I surmised that we could escape, liberated and free, by tossing them some good gold there; good gold there; and in God’s name, good gold there, on behalf of all the devils there! Now a velvet game-bag is not a reliquary for testoons or small coins: it is a receptacle for Sun-crowns: you know that, Frère Jean, my little old well-bollocked. When you’ve roasted as much as I have, and been roasted as much as I’ve been, you’ll talk a different jargon. But by their injunction we are obliged to pass through.’

  Idle scroungers were still waiting in the harbour hoping for a few pennies. And seeing that we intended to set sail, they approached Frère Jean to warn him that there would be no passing through without our bestowing pourboires to the Apparitors in line with the rate for the spices.

  ‘By the Holy Hurlyburly,’ said Frère Jean. ‘Still there, are you, you every-devil’s Griffins! Am I not angry enough already without you pestering me further. God’s Body! I’ll give you your pourboires here and now: I can promise you that for a certainty.’

  Whereupon he drew forth his cutlass and leapt ashore, fully resolved to slaughter them like felons, but they made off at a gallop and we saw them no more.

  We were not yet free from hassle however, since, while we were before Catty-claws, some of our sailors, with Pantagruel’s leave, had resorted to a hostelry near the harbour to have a carousal and a bit of a rest. I do not know whether they had actually paid their scot, but the old woman who kept the inn saw Frère Jean on shore and uttered a long lament in the presence of a serargeant (a son-in-law of one of the Furry-cats) and two bailiffs as witnesses.

  Frère Jean had no patience with their speeches and allegations: he asked, ‘My good-for-nothing friends! Do you mean to say, in short, that our matelots are not decent fellows? Well I maintain the contrary and will prove that to you by Justice, to whit, by this my Lord Cutlass.’

  So saying, he swished about him with his cutlass, but the peasants fled away at a fair pace. Only the old woman was left; she maintained before Frère Jean that those matelots were decent fellows but had paid nothing for the bed they had rested on after dinner. She charged five Touraine shillings for it.

  ‘In truth,’ said Frère Jean, ‘that was a bargain. They are ungrateful. They won’t always get a bed at that price. I will readily pay for the bed but I would like to see it first.’

  The old woman brought him to the inn and showed him the bed. Having praised all its qualities, she said that she was not overpricing in asking for five shillings. Frère Jean handed her her five shillings, then, with his cutlass, sliced the quilt and pillows in two and shook the feathers out of the windows to blow with the wind, while the old woman ran downstairs crying, ‘Help!’ and ‘Murder!’ and devoted herself to gathering up her feathers.

  Frère Jean, quite unconcerned, bore off the quilt, the mattress and the pair of sheets to our ship. Nobody saw him since the air was blanketed with feathers as if by snow. He then said to Pantagruel that beds were much cheaper here than in the Chinonais, despite our having the celebrated Pautille geese, since that old woman had merely asked five dozen pence for a bed which in the Chinonais would fetch a dozen francs at least.12

  How we passed Over, and how Panurge nearly got killed there

  CHAPTER 16

  [This Chapter 16 of the printed text of 1564 does not figure in the Isle Sonante. (In its place is the chapter of the Apedeftes, given at the end in the Appendix.)

  This island’s name, Oultre (Over, or Beyond) lends itself to plays on words: passer oultre is ‘to go beyond’, but also to ‘pass over’ in the sense of to die. T
hese fat natives die oultrés, that is, as bloated as oultres, leathern bottles.

  Since Panurge does not nearly get killed here, the chapter is taken to be unfinished.]

  We at once set sail for Over and recounted our adventures to Pantagruel, who greatly commiserated with us and composed several elegies about them as a pastime.

  Once arrived at Over we rested a while, took on fresh water and loaded wood for our stores. The natives seemed by their looks to be good companions and of good cheer. They were all over-bloated like leathern bottles and gave off greasy farts. We saw there what we had never seen in any other land: they put slashes into their skin to make their fat billow out (exactly as the tarty-farties where I come from have slashes worked into their breeches and make the taffeta billow out). They maintain that they do not do it for vainglory or ostentation but because they could not otherwise be confined to their skins.

  By doing so they also grow taller, just as gardeners incise the bark of their trees to hasten their growth. Near the harbour there was a tavern with a fine and imposing façade. When we saw a great number of the Over-bloated rushing in (people of all sexes, ages and rank) we thought that there must be some notable feast or banquet, but we were informed that they had all been invited by their host to a blowing. We, not understanding their dialect, thought that they called a blow-out a blowing, just as we refer to betrothings, weddings, churchings, shearings and harvestings; we were told that the host had been quite a lad in his time, a good trencherman, a good devourer of Lyonese soups, a notable clock-watcher forever dining like mine Host at Rouillac; and since he had been farting an abundance of grease for the past ten years, he had now reached his blowings. In accordance with the customs of his country he was ending his days in a blow-out, since his peritoneum and his flesh had been slashed over so many years that they could no longer hold up his innards and restrain them from dropping as from a stove-in barrel.