الفصل الفصل 115 · How Panurge maketh the motio

Chapter 3.XXIII.

How Panurge maketh the motion of a return to Raminagrobis.

Let us return, quoth Panurge, not ceasing, to the uttermost of our

abilities, to ply him with wholesome admonitions for the furtherance of his

salvation. Let us go back, for God’s sake; let us go, in the name of God.

It will be a very meritorious work, and of great charity in us to deal so

in the matter, and provide so well for him that, albeit he come to lose

both body and life, he may at least escape the risk and danger of the

eternal damnation of his soul. We will by our holy persuasions bring him

to a sense and feeling of his escapes, induce him to acknowledge his

faults, move him to a cordial repentance of his errors, and stir up in him

such a sincere contrition of heart for his offences, as will prompt him

with all earnestness to cry mercy, and to beg pardon at the hands of the

good fathers, as well of the absent as of such as are present. Whereupon

we will take instrument formally and authentically extended, to the end he

be not, after his decease, declared an heretic, and condemned, as were the

hobgoblins of the provost’s wife of Orleans, to the undergoing of such

punishments, pains, and tortures as are due to and inflicted on those that

inhabit the horrid cells of the infernal regions; and withal incline,

instigate, and persuade him to bequeath and leave in legacy (by way of an

amends and satisfaction for the outrage and injury done to those good

religious fathers throughout all the convents, cloisters, and monasteries

of this province), many bribes, a great deal of mass-singing, store of

obits, and that sempiternally, on the anniversary day of his decease, every

one of them all be furnished with a quintuple allowance, and that the great

borachio replenished with the best liquor trudge apace along the tables, as

well of the young duckling monkitoes, lay brothers, and lowermost degree of

the abbey lubbards, as of the learned priests and reverend clerks,--the

very meanest of the novices and mitiants unto the order being equally

admitted to the benefit of those funerary and obsequial festivals with the

aged rectors and professed fathers. This is the surest ordinary means

whereby from God he may obtain forgiveness. Ho, ho, I am quite mistaken; I

digress from the purpose, and fly out of my discourse, as if my spirits

were a-wool-gathering. The devil take me, if I go thither! Virtue God!

The chamber is already full of devils. O what a swinging, thwacking noise

is now amongst them! O the terrible coil that they keep! Hearken, do you

not hear the rustling, thumping bustle of their strokes and blows, as they

scuffle with one another, like true devils indeed, who shall gulp up the

Raminagrobis soul, and be the first bringer of it, whilst it is hot, to

Monsieur Lucifer? Beware, and get you hence! for my part, I will not go

thither. The devil roast me if I go! Who knows but that these hungry mad

devils may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience take a

qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis snatch up poor Panurge frank and

free? Though formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed. Get

you hence! I will not go thither. Before God, the very bare apprehension

thereof is like to kill me. To be in a place where there are greedy,

famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst factious devils--amidst

trading and trafficking devils--O the Lord preserve me! Get you hence! I

dare pawn my credit on it, that no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin,

Theatin, or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment. The

wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing for them in his latter will

and testament. The devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned, to

his own loss and hindrance be it. What the deuce moved him to be so

snappish and depravedly bent against the good fathers of the true religion?

Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them quite out of his

chamber, even in that very nick of time when he stood in greatest need of

the aid, suffrage, and assistance of their devout prayers and holy

admonitions? Why did not he by testament leave them, at least, some jolly

lumps and cantles of substantial meat, a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals,

and a little belly-timber and provision for the guts of these poor folks,

who have nothing but their life in this world? Let him go thither who

will, the devil take me if I go; for, if I should, the devil would not fail

to snatch me up. Cancro. Ho, the pox! Get you hence, Friar John! Art

thou content that thirty thousand wainload of devils should get away with

thee at this same very instant? If thou be, at my request do these three

things. First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked

with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to

thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of

Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks. This

moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with

Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a

new frock, provided that in the transporting of him over the water he would

bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after the manner of carrying dead

goats; for he was a lusty, strong-limbed, sturdy rogue. The condition

being agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to his very ballocks,

and layeth upon his back, like a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of

the said supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with a good will,

as Aeneas bore his father Anchises through the conflagration of Troy,

singing in the meanwhile a pretty Ave Maris Stella. When they were in the

very deepest place of all the ford, a little above the master-wheel of the

water-mill, he asked if he had any coin about him. Yes, quoth Dodin, a

whole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his ability in the

performance of the promise which he had made unto him concerning a new

frock. How! quoth Friar Crankcod, thou knowest well enough that by the

express rules, canons, and injunctions of our order we are forbidden to

carry on us any kind of money. Thou art truly unhappy, for having made me

in this point to commit a heinous trespass. Why didst thou not leave thy

purse with the miller? Without fail thou shalt presently receive thy

reward for it; and if ever hereafter I may but lay hold upon thee within

the limits of our chancel at Mirebeau, thou shalt have the Miserere even to

the Vitulos. With this, suddenly discharging himself of his burden, he

throws me down your Dodin headlong. Take example by this Dodin, my dear

friend Friar John, to the end that the devils may the better carry thee

away at thine own ease. Give me thy purse. Carry no manner of cross upon

thee. Therein lieth an evident and manifestly apparent danger. For if you

have any silver coined with a cross upon it, they will cast thee down

headlong upon some rocks, as the eagles use to do with the tortoises for

the breaking of their shells, as the bald pate of the poet Aeschylus can

sufficiently bear witness. Such a fall would hurt thee very sore, my sweet

bully, and I would be sorry for it. Or otherwise they will let thee fall

and tumble down into the high swollen waves of some capacious sea, I know

not where; but, I warrant thee, far enough hence, as Icarus fell, which

from thy name would afterwards get the denomination of the Funnelian Sea.

Secondly, be out of debt. For the devils carry a great liking to those

that are out of debt. I have sore felt the experience thereof in mine own

particular; for now the lecherous varlets are always wooing me, courting

me, and making much of me, which they never did when I was all to pieces.

The soul of one in debt is insipid, dry, and heretical altogether.

Thirdly, with the cowl and Domino de Grobis, return to Raminagrobis; and in

case, being thus qualified, thirty thousand boatsful of devils forthwith

come not to carry thee quite away, I shall be content to be at the charge

of paying for the pint and faggot. Now, if for the more security thou

wouldst some associate to bear thee company, let not me be the comrade thou

searchest for; think not to get a fellow-traveller of me,--nay, do not. I

advise thee for the best. Get you hence; I will not go thither. The devil

take me if I go. Notwithstanding all the fright that you are in, quoth

Friar John, I would not care so much as might possibly be expected I

should, if I once had but my sword in my hand. Thou hast verily hit the

nail on the head, quoth Panurge, and speakest like a learned doctor, subtle

and well-skilled in the art of devilry. At the time when I was a student

in the University of Toulouse (Tolette), that same reverend father in the

devil, Picatrix, rector of the diabological faculty, was wont to tell us

that the devils did naturally fear the bright glancing of swords as much as

the splendour and light of the sun. In confirmation of the verity whereof

he related this story, that Hercules, at his descent into hell to all the

devils of those regions, did not by half so much terrify them with his club

and lion’s skin as afterwards Aeneas did with his clear shining armour upon

him, and his sword in his hand well-furbished and unrusted, by the aid,

counsel, and assistance of the Sybilla Cumana. That was perhaps the reason

why the senior John Jacomo di Trivulcio, whilst he was a-dying at Chartres,

called for his cutlass, and died with a drawn sword in his hand, laying

about him alongst and athwart around the bed and everywhere within his

reach, like a stout, doughty, valorous and knight-like cavalier; by which

resolute manner of fence he scared away and put to flight all the devils

that were then lying in wait for his soul at the passage of his death.

When the Massorets and Cabalists are asked why it is that none of all the

devils do at any time enter into the terrestrial paradise? their answer

hath been, is, and will be still, that there is a cherubin standing at the

gate thereof with a flame-like glistering sword in his hand. Although, to

speak in the true diabological sense or phrase of Toledo, I must needs

confess and acknowledge that veritably the devils cannot be killed or die

by the stroke of a sword, I do nevertheless avow and maintain, according to

the doctrine of the said diabology, that they may suffer a solution of

continuity (as if with thy shable thou shouldst cut athwart the flame of a

burning fire, or the gross opacous exhalations of a thick and obscure

smoke), and cry out like very devils at their sense and feeling of this

dissolution, which in real deed I must aver and affirm is devilishly

painful, smarting, and dolorous.

When thou seest the impetuous shock of two armies, and vehement violence of

the push in their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think,

Ballockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the

voice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering

and clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the

justling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the

clamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the

clangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses,

with the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from the double

cannon to the pocket pistol inclusively? I cannot goodly deny but that in

these various things which I have rehearsed there may be somewhat

occasionative of the huge yell and tintamarre of the two engaged bodies.

But the most fearful and tumultuous coil and stir, the terriblest and most

boisterous garboil and hurry, the chiefest rustling black santus of all,

and most principal hurlyburly springeth from the grievously plangorous

howling and lowing of devils, who pell-mell, in a hand-over-head confusion,

waiting for the poor souls of the maimed and hurt soldiery, receive

unawares some strokes with swords, and so by those means suffer a solution

of and division in the continuity of their aerial and invisible substances;

as if some lackey, snatching at the lard-slices stuck in a piece of roast

meat on the spit, should get from Mr. Greasyfist a good rap on the knuckles

with a cudgel. They cry out and shout like devils, even as Mars did when

he was hurt by Diomedes at the siege of Troy, who, as Homer testifieth of

him, did then raise his voice more horrifically loud and sonoriferously

high than ten thousand men together would have been able to do. What

maketh all this for our present purpose? I have been speaking here of

well-furbished armour and bright shining swords. But so is it not, Friar

John, with thy weapon; for by a long discontinuance of work, cessation from

labour, desisting from making it officiate, and putting it into that

practice wherein it had been formerly accustomed, and, in a word, for want

of occupation, it is, upon my faith, become more rusty than the key-hole of

an old powdering-tub. Therefore it is expedient that you do one of these

two things: either furbish your weapon bravely, and as it ought to be, or

otherwise have a care that, in the rusty case it is in, you do not presume

to return to the house of Raminagrobis. For my part, I vow I will not go

thither. The devil take me if I go.