Bab Bab 138 · How Pantagruel and Panurge d

Chapter 3.XLVI.

How Pantagruel and Panurge diversely interpret the words of Triboulet.

He says you are a fool. And what kind of fool? A mad fool, who in your

old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your

pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his

codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the monk. Upon mine honour, it

gives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will

engage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my

possession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe,

Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned

brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to

the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and

responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without

descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch

upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who

is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self.

Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather

with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much

the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously

contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says

that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned,

hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet’s uncle asked from Louis the

Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes

of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for

another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,

and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud,

obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay

hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder,

and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the

back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and

fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as

you stole the hog’s bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.

Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;--not that I would impudently exempt myself

from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that

jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not?

For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou,

all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that

infinite is the number of fools. From an infinity nothing can be deducted

or abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be

added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should

not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the

number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no

bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though

this much of Triboulet’s words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the

prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet

the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my

wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery,

and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in

her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at

the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless

fly-catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse,

that she should be of a jovial country-like humour, as gay and pleasing as a

harmonious hornpipe of Saulieau or Buzansay. The veridical Triboulet did

therein hint at what I liked well, as perfectly knowing the inclinations and

propensions of my mind, my natural disposition, and the bias of my interior

passions and affections. For you may be assured that my humour is much

better satisfied and contented with the pretty, frolic, rural, dishevelled

shepherdesses, whose bums through their coarse canvas smocks smell of the

clover grass of the field, than with those great ladies in magnific courts,

with their flandan top-knots and sultanas, their polvil, pastillos, and

cosmetics. The homely sound, likewise, of a rustical hornpipe is more

agreeable to my ears than the curious warbling and musical quavering of

lutes, theorbos, viols, rebecs, and violins. He gave me a lusty rapping

thwack on my back,--what then? Let it pass, in the name and for the love of

God, as an abatement of and deduction from so much of my future pains in

purgatory. He did it not out of any evil intent. He thought, belike, to

have hit some of the pages. He is an honest fool, and an innocent

changeling. It is a sin to harbour in the heart any bad conceit of him. As

for myself, I heartily pardon him. He flirted me on the nose. In that

there is no harm; for it importeth nothing else but that betwixt my wife and

me there will occur some toyish wanton tricks which usually happen to all

new-married folks.