Chương Chương 103 · How Pantagruel showeth the t

Chapter 3.XI.

How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one’s fortune by the throwing of dice

to be unlawful.

It would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should

try the matter at the chance of three fair dice. Quoth Pantagruel, That

sort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly

scandalous. Never trust in it. The accursed book of the Recreation of

Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that

ancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue

or massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several

places of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his

snares. You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his

kingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts

thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it

out of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any

well-polished state or commonwealth. What I have told you of dice, I say

the same of the play at cockall. It is a lottery of the like guile and

deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in

opposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast

of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These

are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the

foolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.

Nevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you

throw three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the

blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that

page which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.

Have you any dice in your pocket? A whole bagful, answered Panurge. That

is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.

2. De Patria Diabolorum. The devil would be sure to take me napping, and

very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice. With this, the

three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the

lower points that the cast was five, six, and five. These are, quoth

Panurge, sixteen in all. Let us take the sixteenth line of the page. The

number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy

chance. May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great

bowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a

battalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the

first night of our marriage! Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,

quoth Pantagruel. You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid

imprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a

business, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know

is usually at tennis called fifteen. At the next justling turn you may

readily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen. Is it

so, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter? And must my words be

thus interpreted? Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by

that valiant champion who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood sentry at

the hypogastrian cranny. Did you ever hitherto find me in the

confraternity of the faulty? Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for

ever and a day. I do the feat like a goodly friar or father confessor,

without default. And therein am I willing to be judged by the players. He

had no sooner spoke these words than the works of Virgil were brought in.

But before the book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My heart,

like the furch of a hart in a rut, doth beat within my breast. Be pleased

to feel and grope my pulse a little on this artery of my left arm. At its

frequent rise and fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after

the manner of a probationer, posed and put to a peremptory trial in the

examination of his sufficiency for the discharge of the learned duty of a

graduate in some eminent degree in the college of the Sorbonists.

But would you not hold it expedient, before we proceed any further, that we

should invocate Hercules and the Tenetian goddesses who in the chamber of

lots are said to rule, sit in judgment, and bear a presidential sway?

Neither him nor them, answered Pantagruel; only open up the leaves of the

book with your fingers, and set your nails awork.