Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And Sayings Of Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel Read online

  Chapter 4.XXVI.--How the good Macrobius gave us an account of the mansion and decease of the heroes

  Chapter 4.XXVII.--Pantagruel's discourse of the decease of heroic souls; and of the dreadful prodigies that happened before the death of the late Lord de Langey

  Chapter 4.XXVIII.--How Pantagruel related a very sad story of the death of the heroes

  Chapter 4.XXIX.--How Pantagruel sailed by the Sneaking Island, where Shrovetide reigned

  Chapter 4.XXX.--How Shrovetide is anatomized and described by Xenomanes

  Chapter 4.XXXI.--Shrovetide's outward parts anatomized

  Chapter 4.XXXII.--A continuation of Shrovetide's countenance

  Chapter 4.XXXIII.--How Pantagruel discovered a monstrous physeter, or whirlpool, near the Wild Island

  Chapter 4.XXXIV.--How the monstrous physeter was slain by Pantagruel

  Chapter 4.XXXV.--How Pantagruel went on shore in the Wild Island, the ancient abode of the Chitterlings

  Chapter 4.XXXVI.--How the wild Chitterlings laid an ambuscado for Pantagruel

  Chapter 4.XXXVII.--How Pantagruel sent for Colonel Maul-chitterling and Colonel Cut-pudding; with a discourse well worth your hearing about the names of places and persons

  Chapter 4.XXXVIII.--How Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men

  Chapter 4.XXXIX.--How Friar John joined with the cooks to fight the Chitterlings

  Chapter 4.XL.--How Friar John fitted up the sow; and of the valiant cooks that went into it

  Chapter 4.XLI.--How Pantagruel broke the Chitterlings at the knees

  Chapter 4.XLII.--How Pantagruel held a treaty with Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings

  Chapter 4.XLIII.--How Pantagruel went into the island of Ruach

  Chapter 4.XLIV.--How small rain lays a high wind

  Chapter 4.XLV.--How Pantagruel went ashore in the island of Pope-Figland

  Chapter 4.XLVI.--How a junior devil was fooled by a husbandman of Pope- Figland

  Chapter 4.XLVII.--How the devil was deceived by an old woman of Pope- Figland

  Chapter 4.XLVIII.--How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany

  Chapter 4.XLIX.--How Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopet decretals

  Chapter 4.L.--How Homenas showed us the archetype, or representation of a pope

  Chapter 4.LI.--Table-talk in praise of the decretals

  Chapter 4.LII.--A continuation of the miracles caused by the decretals

  Chapter 4.LIII.--How, by the virtue of the decretals, gold is subtilely drawn out of France to Rome

  Chapter 4.LIV.--How Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears

  Chapter 4.LV.--How Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words

  Chapter 4.LVI.--How among the frozen words Pantagruel found some odd ones

  Chapter 4.LVII.--How Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, the first master of arts in the world

  Chapter 4.LVIII.--How, at the court of the master of ingenuity, Pantagruel detested the Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters

  Chapter 4.LIX.--Of the ridiculous statue Manduce; and how and what the Gastrolaters sacrifice to their ventripotent god

  Chapter 4.LX.--What the Gastrolaters sacrificed to their god on interlarded fish-days

  Chapter 4.LXI.--How Gaster invented means to get and preserve corn

  Chapter 4.LXII.--How Gaster invented an art to avoid being hurt or touched by cannon-balls

  Chapter 4.LXIII.--How Pantagruel fell asleep near the island of Chaneph, and of the problems proposed to be solved when he waked

  Chapter 4.LXIV.--How Pantagruel gave no answer to the problems

  Chapter 4.LXV.--How Pantagruel passed the time with his servants

  Chapter 4.LXVI.--How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of Ganabim

  Chapter 4.LXVII.--How Panurge berayed himself for fear; and of the huge cat Rodilardus, which he took for a puny devil

  The Fifth Book

  The Author's Prologue

  Chapter 5.I.--How Pantagruel arrived at the Ringing Island, and of the noise that we heard

  Chapter 5.II.--How the Ringing Island had been inhabited by the Siticines, who were become birds

  Chapter 5.III.--How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island

  Chapter 5.IV.--How the birds of the Ringing Island were all passengers

  Chapter 5.V.--Of the dumb Knight-hawks of the Ringing Island

  Chapter 5.VI.--How the birds are crammed in the Ringing Island

  Chapter 5.VII.--How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass

  Chapter 5.VIII.--How with much ado we got a sight of the pope-hawk

  Chapter 5.IX.--How we arrived at the island of Tools

  Chapter 5.X.--How Pantagruel arrived at the island of Sharping

  Chapter 5.XI.--How we passed through the wicket inhabited by Gripe-men-all, Archduke of the Furred Law-cats

  Chapter 5.XII.--How Gripe-men-all propounded a riddle to us

  Chapter 5.XIII.--How Panurge solved Gripe-men-all's riddle

  Chapter 5.XIV.--How the Furred Law-cats live on corruption

  Chapter 5.XV.--How Friar John talks of rooting out the Furred Law-cats

  Chapter 5.XVI.--How Pantagruel came to the island of the Apedefers, or Ignoramuses, with long claws and crooked paws, and of terrible adventures and monsters there

  Chapter 5.XVII.--How we went forwards, and how Panurge had like to have been killed

  Chapter 5.XVIII.--How our ships were stranded, and we were relieved by some people that were subject to Queen Whims (qui tenoient de la Quinte)

  Chapter 5.XIX.--How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

  Chapter 5.XX.--How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song

  Chapter 5.XXI.--How the Queen passed her time after dinner

  Chapter 5.XXII.--How Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us among her abstractors

  Chapter 5.XXIII.--How the Queen was served at dinner, and of her way of eating

  Chapter 5.XXIV.--How there was a ball in the manner of a tournament, at which Queen Whims was present

  Chapter 5.XXV.--How the thirty-two persons at the ball fought

  Chapter 5.XXVI.--How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways go up and down

  Chapter 5.XXVII.--How we came to the island of Sandals; and of the order of Semiquaver Friars

  Chapter 5.XXVIII.--How Panurge asked a Semiquaver Friar many questions, and was only answered in monosyllables

  Chapter 5.XXIX.--How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent

  Chapter 5.XXX.--How we came to the land of Satin

  Chapter 5.XXXI.--How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching

  Chapter 5.XXXII.--How we came in sight of Lantern-land

  Chapter 5.XXXIII.--How we landed at the port of the Lychnobii, and came to Lantern-land

  Chapter 5.XXXIV.--How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle

  Chapter 5.XXXV.--How we went underground to come to the Temple of the Holy Bottle, and how Chinon is the oldest city in the world

  Chapter 5.XXXVI.--How we went down the tetradic steps, and of Panurge's fear

  Chapter 5.XXXVII.--How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves

  Chapter 5.XXXVIII.--Of the temple's admirable pavement

  Chapter 5.XXXIX.--How we saw Bacchus's army drawn up in battalia in mosaic work

  Chapter 5.XL. How the battle in which the good Bacchus overthrew the Indians was represented in mosaic work.

  Chapter 5.XLI.--How the temple was illuminated with a wonderful lamp

  Chapter 5.XLII.--How the Priestess Bacbuc showed us a fantastic fountain in the temple, and how the fountain-water had the taste of wine, according to the imagination of those who drank of it

  Chapter 5.XLIII.--How the Priestess Bacbuc equipped Panurge in order to have the word of the Bottle

  Chapter 5.XLIV.--How Bacbuc, the high-priestess, broug
ht Panurge before the Holy Bottle

  Chapter 5.XLV.--How Bacbuc explained the word of the Goddess-Bottle

  Chapter 5.XLVI.--How Panurge and the rest rhymed with poetic fury

  Chapter 5.XLVII.--How we took our leave of Bacbuc, and left the Oracle of the Holy Bottle This page copyright © 2000 Blackmask Online.

  The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from the first edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.' are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by the translator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in 1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship. Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (as the footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored from the 1738 copy edited by Ozell.

  Introduction.

  Had Rabelais never written his strange and marvellous romance, no one would ever have imagined the possibility of its production. It stands outside other things--a mixture of mad mirth and gravity, of folly and reason, of childishness and grandeur, of the commonplace and the out-of-the-way, of popular verve and polished humanism, of mother-wit and learning, of baseness and nobility, of personalities and broad generalization, of the comic and the serious, of the impossible and the familiar. Throughout the whole there is such a force of life and thought, such a power of good sense, a kind of assurance so authoritative, that he takes rank with the greatest; and his peers are not many. You may like him or not, may attack him or sing his praises, but you cannot ignore him. He is of those that die hard. Be as fastidious as you will; make up your mind to recognize only those who are, without any manner of doubt, beyond and above all others; however few the names you keep, Rabelais' will always remain.

  We may know his work, may know it well, and admire it more every time we read it. After being amused by it, after having enjoyed it, we may return again to study it and to enter more fully into its meaning. Yet there is no possibility of knowing his own life in the same fashion. In spite of all the efforts, often successful, that have been made to throw light on it, to bring forward a fresh document, or some obscure mention in a forgotten book, to add some little fact, to fix a date more precisely, it remains nevertheless full of uncertainty and of gaps. Besides, it has been burdened and sullied by all kinds of wearisome stories and foolish anecdotes, so that really there is more to weed out than to add.

  This injustice, at first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, who seems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book, and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the Guises had given him only a little pavillon in the Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a buffoon, a veritable clown, a vagrant, a glutton, and a drunkard.

  The likeness of his person has undergone a similar metamorphosis. He has been credited with a full moon of a face, the rubicund nose of an incorrigible toper, and thick coarse lips always apart because always laughing. The picture would have surprised his friends no less than himself. There have been portraits painted of Rabelais; I have seen many such. They are all of the seventeenth century, and the greater number are conceived in this jovial and popular style.

  As a matter of fact there is only one portrait of him that counts, that has more than the merest chance of being authentic, the one in the Chronologie collee or coupee. Under this double name is known and cited a large sheet divided by lines and cross lines into little squares, containing about a hundred heads of illustrious Frenchmen. This sheet was stuck on pasteboard for hanging on the wall, and was cut in little pieces, so that the portraits might be sold separately. The majority of the portraits are of known persons and can therefore be verified. Now it can be seen that these have been selected with care, and taken from the most authentic sources; from statues, busts, medals, even stained glass, for the persons of most distinction, from earlier engravings for the others. Moreover, those of which no other copies exist, and which are therefore the most valuable, have each an individuality very distinct, in the features, the hair, the beard, as well as in the costume. Not one of them is like another. There has been no tampering with them, no forgery. On the contrary, there is in each a difference, a very marked personality. Leonard Gaultier, who published this engraving towards the end of the sixteenth century, reproduced a great many portraits besides from chalk drawings, in the style of his master, Thomas de Leu. It must have been such drawings that were the originals of those portraits which he alone has issued, and which may therefore be as authentic and reliable as the others whose correctness we are in a position to verify.

  Now Rabelais has here nothing of the Roger Bontemps of low degree about him. His features are strong, vigorously cut, and furrowed with deep wrinkles; his beard is short and scanty; his cheeks are thin and already worn-looking. On his head he wears the square cap of the doctors and the clerks, and his dominant expression, somewhat rigid and severe, is that of a physician and a scholar. And this is the only portrait to which we need attach any importance.

  This is not the place for a detailed biography, nor for an exhaustive study. At most this introduction will serve as a framework on which to fix a few certain dates, to hang some general observations. The date of Rabelais' birth is very doubtful. For long it was placed as far back as 1483: now scholars are disposed to put it forward to about 1495. The reason, a good one, is that all those whom he has mentioned as his friends, or in any real sense his contemporaries, were born at the very end of the fifteenth century. And, indeed, it is in the references in his romance to names, persons, and places, that the most certain and valuable evidence is to be found of his intercourse, his patrons, his friendships, his sojournings, and his travels: his own work is the best and richest mine in which to search for the details of his life.

  Like Descartes and Balzac, he was a native of Touraine, and Tours and Chinon have only done their duty in each of them erecting in recent years a statue to his honour, a twofold homage reflecting credit both on the province and on the town. But the precise facts about his birth are nevertheless vague. Huet speaks of the village of Benais, near Bourgeuil, of whose vineyards Rabelais makes mention. As the little vineyard of La Deviniere, near Chinon, and familiar to all his readers, is supposed to have belonged to his father, Thomas Rabelais, some would have him born there. It is better to hold to the earlier general opinion that Chinon was his native town; Chinon, whose praises he sang with such heartiness and affection. There he might well have been born in the Lamproie house, which belonged to his father, who, to judge from this circumstance, must have been in easy circumstances, with the position of a well-to-do citizen. As La Lamproie in the seventeenth century was a hostelry, the father of Rabelais has been set down as an innkeeper. More probably he was an apothecary, which would fit in with the medical profession adopted by his son in after years. Rabelais had brothers, all older than himself. Perhaps because he was the youngest, his father destined him for the Church.

  The time he spent while a child with the Benedictine monks at Seuille is uncertain. There he might have made the acquaintance of the prototype of his Friar John, a brother of the name of Buinart, afterwards Prior of Sermaize. He was longer at the Abbey of the Cordeliers at La Baumette, half a mile from Angers, where he became a novice. As the brothers Du Bellay, who were later his Maecenases, were then studying at the University of Angers, where it is certain he was not a student, it is doubtless from this youthful period that his acquaintance and alliance with them should date. Voluntarily, or induced by his family, Rabelais now embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and entered the monastery of the Franciscan Cordeliers at Fontenay-le-Comte, in Lower Poitou, which was honoured by his long sojourn at the vital period of his life when his powers were ripening. There it was he began t
o study and to think, and there also began his troubles.

  In spite of the wide-spread ignorance among the monks of that age, the encyclopaedic movement of the Renaissance was attracting all the lofty minds. Rabelais threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and Latin antiquity was not enough for him. Greek, a study discountenanced by the Church, which looked on it as dangerous and tending to freethought and heresy, took possession of him. To it he owed the warm friendship of Pierre Amy and of the celebrated Guillaume Bude. In fact, the Greek letters of the latter are the best source of information concerning this period of Rabelais' life. It was at Fontenay-le-Comte also that he became acquainted with the Brissons and the great jurist Andre Tiraqueau, whom he never mentions but with admiration and deep affection. Tiraqueau's treatise, De legibus connubialibus, published for the first time in 1513, has an important bearing on the life of Rabelais. There we learn that, dissatisfied with the incomplete translation of Herodotus by Laurent Valla, Rabelais had retranslated into Latin the first book of the History. That translation unfortunately is lost, as so many other of his scattered works. It is probably in this direction that the hazard of fortune has most discoveries and surprises in store for the lucky searcher. Moreover, as in this law treatise Tiraqueau attacked women in a merciless fashion, President Amaury Bouchard published in 1522 a body in their defence, and Rabelais, who was a friend of both the antagonists, took the side of Tiraqueau. It should be observed also in passing, that there are several pages of such audacious plain-speaking, that Rabelais, though he did not copy these in his Marriage of Panurge, has there been, in his own fashion, as out spoken as Tiraqueau. If such freedom of language could be permitted in a grave treatise of law, similar liberties were certainly, in the same century, more natural in a book which was meant to amuse.

  The great reproach always brought against Rabelais is not the want of reserve of his language merely, but his occasional studied coarseness, which is enough to spoil his whole work, and which lowers its value. La Bruyere, in the chapter Des ouvrages de l'esprit, not in the first edition of the Caracteres, but in the fifth, that is to say in 1690, at the end of the great century, gives us on this subject his own opinion and that of his age: