Bab Bab 17 · How Gargantua paid his welco

Chapter 1.XVII.

How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians, and how he took away the

great bells of Our Lady’s Church.

Some few days after that they had refreshed themselves, he went to see the

city, and was beheld of everybody there with great admiration; for the

people of Paris are so sottish, so badot, so foolish and fond by nature,

that a juggler, a carrier of indulgences, a sumpter-horse, or mule with

cymbals or tinkling bells, a blind fiddler in the middle of a cross lane,

shall draw a greater confluence of people together than an evangelical

preacher. And they pressed so hard upon him that he was constrained to

rest himself upon the towers of Our Lady’s Church. At which place, seeing

so many about him, he said with a loud voice, I believe that these buzzards

will have me to pay them here my welcome hither, and my Proficiat. It is

but good reason. I will now give them their wine, but it shall be only in

sport. Then smiling, he untied his fair braguette, and drawing out his

mentul into the open air, he so bitterly all-to-bepissed them, that he

drowned two hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and eighteen, besides

the women and little children. Some, nevertheless, of the company escaped

this piss-flood by mere speed of foot, who, when they were at the higher

end of the university, sweating, coughing, spitting, and out of breath,

they began to swear and curse, some in good hot earnest, and others in

jest. Carimari, carimara: golynoly, golynolo. By my sweet Sanctess, we

are washed in sport, a sport truly to laugh at;--in French, Par ris, for

which that city hath been ever since called Paris; whose name formerly was

Leucotia, as Strabo testifieth, lib. quarto, from the Greek word leukotes,

whiteness,--because of the white thighs of the ladies of that place. And

forasmuch as, at this imposition of a new name, all the people that were

there swore everyone by the Sancts of his parish, the Parisians, which are

patched up of all nations and all pieces of countries, are by nature both

good jurors and good jurists, and somewhat overweening; whereupon Joanninus

de Barrauco, libro de copiositate reverentiarum, thinks that they are

called Parisians from the Greek word parresia, which signifies boldness and

liberty in speech. This done, he considered the great bells, which were in

the said towers, and made them sound very harmoniously. Which whilst he

was doing, it came into his mind that they would serve very well for

tingling tantans and ringing campanels to hang about his mare’s neck when

she should be sent back to his father, as he intended to do, loaded with

Brie cheese and fresh herring. And indeed he forthwith carried them to his

lodging. In the meanwhile there came a master beggar of the friars of St.

Anthony to demand in his canting way the usual benevolence of some hoggish

stuff, who, that he might be heard afar off, and to make the bacon he was

in quest of shake in the very chimneys, made account to filch them away

privily. Nevertheless, he left them behind very honestly, not for that

they were too hot, but that they were somewhat too heavy for his carriage.

This was not he of Bourg, for he was too good a friend of mine. All the

city was risen up in sedition, they being, as you know, upon any slight

occasion, so ready to uproars and insurrections, that foreign nations

wonder at the patience of the kings of France, who do not by good justice

restrain them from such tumultuous courses, seeing the manifold

inconveniences which thence arise from day to day. Would to God I knew the

shop wherein are forged these divisions and factious combinations, that I

might bring them to light in the confraternities of my parish! Believe for

a truth, that the place wherein the people gathered together, were thus

sulphured, hopurymated, moiled, and bepissed, was called Nesle, where then

was, but now is no more, the oracle of Leucotia. There was the case

proposed, and the inconvenience showed of the transporting of the bells.

After they had well ergoted pro and con, they concluded in baralipton, that

they should send the oldest and most sufficient of the faculty unto

Gargantua, to signify unto him the great and horrible prejudice they

sustain by the want of those bells. And notwithstanding the good reasons

given in by some of the university why this charge was fitter for an orator

than a sophister, there was chosen for this purpose our Master Janotus de

Bragmardo.