Chapter Chapter 95 · How Panurge praiseth the deb

Chapter 3.III.

How Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers.

But, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt? At the next ensuing

term of the Greek kalends, answered Panurge, when all the world shall be

content, and that it be your fate to become your own heir. The Lord forbid

that I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not be trusted. Who

leaves not some leaven over night, will hardly have paste the next morning.

Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always

to pray for you, that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a

blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly

with you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you,

he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase

new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a

shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk’s earth fill

up his ditch. When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution

of the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the

funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear

enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, perforce,

they were to die with them for company. Did not they incessantly send up

their supplications to their great god Mercury, as likewise unto Dis, the

father of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in

health? Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to

look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly? For by

those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death.

Believe me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech

Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than

that you should die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than

the arm, and love silver better than their own lives. As it evidently

appeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged

themselves because the price of the corn and wines was fallen by the return

of a gracious season. To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went

on in his discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my

destiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me shrewdly to my plunges,

and have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and

creditors. And yet did I, in this only respect and consideration of being

a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable. For against

the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet,

without having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First

Matter, did I out of nothing become such (a) maker and creator, that I have

created--what?--a gay number of fair and jolly creditors. Nay, creditors,

I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and

goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and

an accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick. And there is made--what? Debts.

A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity. Debts, I

say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the

combinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore

projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates. To judge of

the perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors is the

readiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical arithmetic.

You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself

environed and surrounded with brigades of creditors--humble, fawning, and

full of their reverences. And whilst I remark that, as I look more

favourably upon and give a cheerfuller countenance to one than to another,

the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first

despatched and the foremost in the date of payment, and he valueth my

smiles at the rate of ready money, it seemeth unto me that I then act and

personate the god of the passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels

and cherubims.

These are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my

parasites, my saluters, my givers of good-morrows, and perpetual orators;

which makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue

described by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first

degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all human creatures seem

to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties

in the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is

easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in

the breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.

Yet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor. To acquire

creditors is not at the disposure of each man’s arbitrament. You

nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity. You ask me when I

will be out of debt. Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in

your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not

all my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens

with the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept

together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny

of Adam would very suddenly perish without it. Therefore, perhaps, I do

not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul of the universe,

which, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of

things. In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be

so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a clear

and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if

you please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher

Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor

or creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.

There amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in

disorder. Jupiter, reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn,

will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain

will be like to hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes,

devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements. Saturn, no doubt,

combining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of

confusion.

Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would

scorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he was of old termed in the

Etrurian tongue. For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to

them.

Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing. The

moon will remain bloody and obscure. For to what end should the sun impart

unto her any of his light? He owed her nothing. Nor yet will the sun

shine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because

the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted

nourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the

Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented. There

would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration,

nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself

obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it. Earth

then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will

be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth

will produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will descend

upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there

be in it any summer or harvest. Lucifer will break loose, and issuing

forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned

devils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as

well of the greater as of the lesser nations. Such a world without lending

will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling,

more unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an

hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than that of the plagues of

Douay. Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to

expect aid or succour from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none

will put to their helping hand. Why? He lent no money, there is nothing

due to him. Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his

ruin, or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and

would never thereafter have lent anything. In short, Faith, Hope, and

Charity would be quite banished from such a world--for men are born to

relieve and assist one another; and in their stead should succeed and be

introduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of

all evils, all imprecations, and all miseries. Whereupon you will think,

and that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle. Men

unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon,

Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats,

rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,

pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or

Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such

sort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained

in the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or

tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend. These fellows, I

vow, do I hate with a perfect hatred; and if, conform to the pattern of

this grievous, peevish, and perverse world which lendeth nothing, you

figure and liken the little world, which is man, you will find in him a

terrible justling coil and clutter. The head will not lend the sight of

his eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs will refuse to bear up the

body; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the

members; the heart will be weary of its continual motion for the beating of

the pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will withdraw

the use of their bellows; the liver will desist from convoying any more

blood through the veins for the good of the whole; the bladder will not be

indebted to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally stopped.

The brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall

into a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling from the sinews and motion

from the muscles. Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing

nothing, lending nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would see a more

dangerous conspiration than that which Aesop exposed in his Apologue. Such

a world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish, but perish very

quickly. Were it Aesculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and

the chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight to all the devils of

hell after my money.