Bab Bab 62 · Of the infancy of Pantagruel

Chapter 2.IV.

Of the infancy of Pantagruel.

I find by the ancient historiographers and poets that divers have been born

in this world after very strange manners, which would be too long to

repeat; read therefore the seventh chapter of Pliny, if you have so much

leisure. Yet have you never heard of any so wonderful as that of

Pantagruel; for it is a very difficult matter to believe, how in the little

time he was in his mother’s belly he grew both in body and strength. That

which Hercules did was nothing, when in his cradle he slew two serpents,

for those serpents were but little and weak, but Pantagruel, being yet in

the cradle, did far more admirable things, and more to be amazed at. I

pass by here the relation of how at every one of his meals he supped up the

milk of four thousand and six hundred cows, and how, to make him a skillet

to boil his milk in, there were set a-work all the braziers of Somure in

Anjou, of Villedieu in Normandy, and of Bramont in Lorraine. And they

served in this whitepot-meat to him in a huge great bell, which is yet to

be seen in the city of Bourges in Berry, near the palace, but his teeth

were already so well grown, and so strengthened with vigour, that of the

said bell he bit off a great morsel, as very plainly doth appear till this

hour.

One day in the morning, when they would have made him suck one of his cows

--for he never had any other nurse, as the history tells us--he got one of

his arms loose from the swaddling bands wherewith he was kept fast in the

cradle, laid hold on the said cow under the left foreham, and grasping her

to him ate up her udder and half of her paunch, with the liver and the

kidneys, and had devoured all up if she had not cried out most horribly, as

if the wolves had held her by the legs, at which noise company came in and

took away the said cow from Pantagruel. Yet could they not so well do it

but that the quarter whereby he caught her was left in his hand, of which

quarter he gulped up the flesh in a trice, even with as much ease as you

would eat a sausage, and that so greedily with desire of more, that, when

they would have taken away the bone from him, he swallowed it down whole,

as a cormorant would do a little fish; and afterwards began fumblingly to

say, Good, good, good--for he could not yet speak plain--giving them to

understand thereby that he had found it very good, and that he did lack but

so much more. Which when they saw that attended him, they bound him with

great cable-ropes, like those that are made at Tain for the carriage of

salt to Lyons, or such as those are whereby the great French ship rides at

anchor in the road of Newhaven in Normandy. But, on a certain time, a

great bear, which his father had bred, got loose, came towards him, began

to lick his face, for his nurses had not thoroughly wiped his chaps, at

which unexpected approach being on a sudden offended, he as lightly rid

himself of those great cables as Samson did of the hawser ropes wherewith

the Philistines had tied him, and, by your leave, takes me up my lord the

bear, and tears him to you in pieces like a pullet, which served him for a

gorgeful or good warm bit for that meal.

Whereupon Gargantua, fearing lest the child should hurt himself, caused

four great chains of iron to be made to bind him, and so many strong wooden

arches unto his cradle, most firmly stocked and morticed in huge frames.

Of those chains you have one at Rochelle, which they draw up at night

betwixt the two great towers of the haven. Another is at Lyons,--a third

at Angiers,--and the fourth was carried away by the devils to bind Lucifer,

who broke his chains in those days by reason of a colic that did

extraordinarily torment him, taken with eating a sergeant’s soul fried for

his breakfast. And therefore you may believe that which Nicholas de Lyra

saith upon that place of the Psalter where it is written, Et Og Regem

Basan, that the said Og, being yet little, was so strong and robustious,

that they were fain to bind him with chains of iron in his cradle. Thus

continued Pantagruel for a while very calm and quiet, for he was not able

so easily to break those chains, especially having no room in the cradle to

give a swing with his arms. But see what happened once upon a great

holiday that his father Gargantua made a sumptuous banquet to all the

princes of his court. I am apt to believe that the menial officers of the

house were so embusied in waiting each on his proper service at the feast,

that nobody took care of poor Pantagruel, who was left a reculorum,

behindhand, all alone, and as forsaken. What did he? Hark what he did,

good people. He strove and essayed to break the chains of the cradle with

his arms, but could not, for they were too strong for him. Then did he

keep with his feet such a stamping stir, and so long, that at last he beat

out the lower end of his cradle, which notwithstanding was made of a great

post five foot in square; and as soon as he had gotten out his feet, he

slid down as well as he could till he had got his soles to the ground, and

then with a mighty force he rose up, carrying his cradle upon his back,

bound to him like a tortoise that crawls up against a wall; and to have

seen him, you would have thought it had been a great carrick of five

hundred tons upon one end. In this manner he entered into the great hall

where they were banqueting, and that very boldly, which did much affright

the company; yet, because his arms were tied in, he could not reach

anything to eat, but with great pain stooped now and then a little to take

with the whole flat of his tongue some lick, good bit, or morsel. Which

when his father saw, he knew well enough that they had left him without

giving him anything to eat, and therefore commanded that he should be

loosed from the said chains, by the counsel of the princes and lords there

present. Besides that also the physicians of Gargantua said that, if they

did thus keep him in the cradle, he would be all his lifetime subject to

the stone. When he was unchained, they made him to sit down, where, after

he had fed very well, he took his cradle and broke it into more than five

hundred thousand pieces with one blow of his fist that he struck in the

midst of it, swearing that he would never come into it again.