บทที่ บทที่ 128 · A continuation of the answer

Chapter 3.XXXVI.

A continuation of the answer of the Ephectic and Pyrrhonian philosopher

Trouillogan.

You speak wisely, quoth Panurge, if the moon were green cheese. Such a

tale once pissed my goose. I do not think but that I am let down into that

dark pit in the lowermost bottom whereof the truth was hid, according to

the saying of Heraclitus. I see no whit at all, I hear nothing, understand

as little, my senses are altogether dulled and blunted; truly I do very

shrewdly suspect that I am enchanted. I will now alter the former style of

my discourse, and talk to him in another strain. Our trusty friend, stir

not, nor imburse any; but let us vary the chance, and speak without

disjunctives. I see already that these loose and ill-joined members of an

enunciation do vex, trouble, and perplex you.

Now go on, in the name of God! Should I marry?

Trouillogan. There is some likelihood therein.

Panurge. But if I do not marry?

Trouil. I see in that no inconvenience.

Pan. You do not?

Trouil. None, truly, if my eyes deceive me not.

Pan. Yea, but I find more than five hundred.

Trouil. Reckon them.

Pan. This is an impropriety of speech, I confess; for I do no more

thereby but take a certain for an uncertain number, and posit the

determinate term for what is indeterminate. When I say, therefore, five

hundred, my meaning is many.

Trouil. I hear you.

Pan. Is it possible for me to live without a wife, in the name of all the

subterranean devils?

Trouil. Away with these filthy beasts.

Pan. Let it be, then, in the name of God; for my Salmigondinish people

use to say, To lie alone, without a wife, is certainly a brutish life. And

such a life also was it assevered to be by Dido in her lamentations.

Trouil. At your command.

Pan. By the pody cody, I have fished fair; where are we now? But will

you tell me? Shall I marry?

Trouil. Perhaps.

Pan. Shall I thrive or speed well withal?

Trouil. According to the encounter.

Pan. But if in my adventure I encounter aright, as I hope I will, shall

I be fortunate?

Trouil. Enough.

Pan. Let us turn the clean contrary way, and brush our former words

against the wool: what if I encounter ill?

Trouil. Then blame not me.

Pan. But, of courtesy, be pleased to give me some advice. I heartily

beseech you, what must I do?

Trouil. Even what thou wilt.

Pan. Wishy, washy; trolly, trolly.

Trouil. Do not invocate the name of anything, I pray you.

Pan. In the name of God, let it be so! My actions shall be regulated by

the rule and square of your counsel. What is it that you advise and

counsel me to do?

Trouil. Nothing.

Pan. Shall I marry?

Trouil. I have no hand in it.

Pan. Then shall I not marry?

Trouil. I cannot help it.

Pan. If I never marry, I shall never be a cuckold.

Trouil. I thought so.

Pan. But put the case that I be married.

Trouil. Where shall we put it?

Pan. Admit it be so, then, and take my meaning in that sense.

Trouil. I am otherwise employed.

Pan. By the death of a hog, and mother of a toad, O Lord! if I durst

hazard upon a little fling at the swearing game, though privily and under

thumb, it would lighten the burden of my heart and ease my lights and reins

exceedingly. A little patience nevertheless is requisite. Well then, if I

marry, I shall be a cuckold.

Trouil. One would say so.

Pan. Yet if my wife prove a virtuous, wise, discreet, and chaste woman,

I shall never be cuckolded.

Trouil. I think you speak congruously.

Pan. Hearken.

Trouil. As much as you will.

Pan. Will she be discreet and chaste? This is the only point I would be

resolved in.

Trouil. I question it.

Pan. You never saw her?

Trouil. Not that I know of.

Pan. Why do you then doubt of that which you know not?

Trouil. For a cause.

Pan. And if you should know her.

Trouil. Yet more.

Pan. Page, my pretty little darling, take here my cap,--I give it thee.

Have a care you do not break the spectacles that are in it. Go down to the

lower court. Swear there half an hour for me, and I shall in compensation

of that favour swear hereafter for thee as much as thou wilt. But who

shall cuckold me?

Trouil. Somebody.

Pan. By the belly of the wooden horse at Troy, Master Somebody, I shall

bang, belam thee, and claw thee well for thy labour.

Trouil. You say so.

Pan. Nay, nay, that Nick in the dark cellar, who hath no white in his

eye, carry me quite away with him if, in that case, whensoever I go abroad

from the palace of my domestic residence, I do not, with as much

circumspection as they use to ring mares in our country to keep them from

being sallied by stoned horses, clap a Bergamasco lock upon my wife.

Trouil. Talk better.

Pan. It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten,

and sung in matter of talk. Let us resolve on somewhat.

Trouil. I do not gainsay it.

Pan. Have a little patience. Seeing I cannot on this side draw any

blood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to

bleed you in another vein. Are you married, or are you not?

Trouil. Neither the one nor the other, and both together.

Pan. O the good God help us! By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with

the toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off,

disturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and

diaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a

suspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch

forth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and

laying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and

answers.

Trouil. I shall be no hinderer thereof.

Pan. Tush, for shame! Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?

Trouil. I think so.

Pan. You were also married before you had this wife?

Trouil. It is possible.

Pan. Had you good luck in your first marriage?

Trouil. It is not impossible.

Pan. How thrive you with this second wife of yours?

Trouil. Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

Pan. But what, in good earnest? Tell me--do you prosper well with her?

Trouil. It is likely.

Pan. Come on, in the name of God. I vow, by the burden of Saint

Christopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of

the belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate

resolution. Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and

get my claws over you. Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell,

and confess the verity. Were you ever a cuckold? I say, you who are here,

and not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?

Trouil. No, if it was not predestinated.

Pan. By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure,

and renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips

and winds himself out of my grips and clutches.

At these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all

things, but especially for bringing the world into that height of

refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted

therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not

ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the

schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects.

Blessed be the holy name of God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be

found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the

neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by

the tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap

such philosophers in their words. Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest

friends.

When he had done thus speaking, he withdrew himself from the company.

Pantagruel and others with him would have followed and accompanied him, but

he would not permit them so to do. No sooner was Gargantua departed out of

the banqueting-hall than that Pantagruel said to the invited guests:

Plato’s Timaeus, at the beginning always of a solemn festival convention,

was wont to count those that were called thereto. We, on the contrary,

shall at the closure and end of this treatment reckon up our number. One,

two, three; where is the fourth? I miss my friend Bridlegoose. Was not he

sent for? Epistemon answered that he had been at his house to bid and

invite him, but could not meet with him; for that a messenger from the

parliament of Mirlingois, in Mirlingues, was come to him with a writ of

summons to cite and warn him personally to appear before the reverend

senators of the high court there, to vindicate and justify himself at the

bar of the crime of prevarication laid to his charge, and to be

peremptorily instanced against him in a certain decree, judgment, or

sentence lately awarded, given, and pronounced by him; and that, therefore,

he had taken horse and departed in great haste from his own house, to the

end that without peril or danger of falling into a default or contumacy he

might be the better able to keep the prefixed and appointed time.

I will, quoth Pantagruel, understand how that matter goeth. It is now

above forty years that he hath been constantly the judge of Fonsbeton,

during which space of time he hath given four thousand definitive

sentences, of two thousand three hundred and nine whereof, although appeal

was made by the parties whom he had judicially condemned from his inferior

judicatory to the supreme court of the parliament of Mirlingois, in

Mirlingues, they were all of them nevertheless confirmed, ratified, and

approved of by an order, decree, and final sentence of the said sovereign

court, to the casting of the appellants, and utter overthrow of the suits

wherein they had been foiled at law, for ever and a day. That now in his

old age he should be personally summoned, who in all the foregoing time of

his life hath demeaned himself so unblamably in the discharge of the office

and vocation he had been called unto, it cannot assuredly be that such a

change hath happened without some notorious misfortune and disaster. I am

resolved to help and assist him in equity and justice to the uttermost

extent of my power and ability. I know the malice, despite, and wickedness

of the world to be so much more nowadays exasperated, increased, and

aggravated by what it was not long since, that the best cause that is, how

just and equitable soever it be, standeth in great need to be succoured,

aided, and supported. Therefore presently, from this very instant forth,

do I purpose, till I see the event and closure thereof, most heedfully to

attend and wait upon it, for fear of some underhand tricky surprisal,

cavilling pettifoggery, or fallacious quirks in law, to his detriment,

hurt, or disadvantage.

Then dinner being done, and the tables drawn and removed, when Pantagruel

had very cordially and affectionately thanked his invited guests for the

favour which he had enjoyed of their company, he presented them with

several rich and costly gifts, such as jewels, rings set with precious

stones, gold and silver vessels, with a great deal of other sort of plate

besides, and lastly, taking of them all his leave, retired himself into an

inner chamber.