Kabanata Kabanata 97 · How Pantagruel altogether ab

Chapter 3.V.

How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.

I understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good

at topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause. But preach it up,

and patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even

from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end

you will be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all

upon me, nor persuaded me by your fair speeches and smooth talk to enter

never so little into the thraldom of debt. You shall owe to none, saith

the holy Apostle, anything save love, friendship, and a mutual benevolence.

You serve me here, I confess, with fine graphides and diatyposes,

descriptions and figures, which truly please me very well. But let me tell

you, if you will represent unto your fancy an impudent blustering bully and

an importunate borrower, entering afresh and newly into a town already

advertised of his manners, you shall find that at his ingress the citizens

will be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and

fear, dread, and trembling, than if the pest itself should step into it in

the very same garb and accoutrement wherein the Tyanean philosopher found

it within the city of Ephesus. And I am fully confirmed in the opinion,

that the Persians erred not when they said that the second vice was to lie,

the first being that of owing money. For, in very truth, debts and lying

are ordinarily joined together. I will nevertheless not from hence infer

that none must owe anything or lend anything. For who so rich can be that

sometimes may not owe, or who can be so poor that sometimes may not lend?

Let the occasion, notwithstanding, in that case, as Plato very wisely

sayeth and ordaineth in his laws, be such that none be permitted to draw

any water out of his neighbour’s well until first they by continual digging

and delving into their own proper ground shall have hit upon a kind of

potter’s earth, which is called ceramite, and there had found no source or

drop of water; for that sort of earth, by reason of its substance, which is

fat, strong, firm, and close, so retaineth its humidity, that it doth not

easily evaporate it by any outward excursion or evaporation.

In good sooth, it is a great shame to choose rather to be still borrowing

in all places from everyone, than to work and win. Then only in my

judgment should one lend, when the diligent, toiling, and industrious

person is no longer able by his labour to make any purchase unto himself,

or otherwise, when by mischance he hath suddenly fallen into an unexpected

loss of his goods.

Howsoever, let us leave this discourse, and from henceforwards do not hang

upon creditors, nor tie yourself to them. I make account for the time past

to rid you freely of them, and from their bondage to deliver you. The

least I should in this point, quoth Panurge, is to thank you, though it be

the most I can do. And if gratitude and thanksgiving be to be estimated

and prized by the affection of the benefactor, that is to be done

infinitely and sempiternally; for the love which you bear me of your own

accord and free grace, without any merit of mine, goeth far beyond the

reach of any price or value. It transcends all weight, all number, all

measure; it is endless and everlasting; therefore, should I offer to

commensurate and adjust it, either to the size and proportion of your own

noble and gracious deeds, or yet to the contentment and delight of the

obliged receivers, I would come off but very faintly and flaggingly. You

have verily done me a great deal of good, and multiplied your favours on me

more frequently than was fitting to one of my condition. You have been

more bountiful towards me than I have deserved, and your courtesies have by

far surpassed the extent of my merits, I must needs confess it. But it is

not, as you suppose, in the proposed matter. For there it is not where I

itch, it is not there where it fretteth, hurts, or vexeth me; for,

henceforth being quit and out of debt, what countenance will I be able to

keep? You may imagine that it will become me very ill for the first month,

because I have never hitherto been brought up or accustomed to it. I am

very much afraid of it. Furthermore, there shall not one hereafter, native

of the country of Salmigondy, but he shall level the shot towards my nose.

All the back-cracking fellows of the world, in discharging of their postern

petarades, use commonly to say, Voila pour les quittes, that is, For the

quit. My life will be of very short continuance, I do foresee it. I

recommend to you the making of my epitaph; for I perceive I will die

confected in the very stench of farts. If, at any time to come, by way of

restorative to such good women as shall happen to be troubled with the

grievous pain of the wind-colic, the ordinary medicaments prove nothing

effectual, the mummy of all my befarted body will straight be as a present

remedy appointed by the physicians; whereof they, taking any small modicum,

it will incontinently for their ease afford them a rattle of bumshot, like

a sal of muskets.

Therefore would I beseech you to leave me some few centuries of debts; as

King Louis the Eleventh, exempting from suits in law the Reverend Miles

d’Illiers, Bishop of Chartres, was by the said bishop most earnestly

solicited to leave him some few for the exercise of his mind. I had rather

give them all my revenue of the periwinkles, together with the other

incomes of the locusts, albeit I should not thereby have any parcel abated

from off the principal sums which I owe. Let us waive this matter, quoth

Pantagruel, I have told it you over again.