Chương Chương 137 · How Panurge taketh advice of

Chapter 3.XLV.

How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.

On the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same

hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois. Panurge, at his arrival,

gave him a hog’s bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the

hard peas that were within it. Moreover he did present him with a gilt

wooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled

wicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the

orchard of Blandureau.

If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no

more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage. Triboulet

girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate

some few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine. Panurge very wistly and

heedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen

ten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink

heartily, and by good long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his

drinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business

wherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted

terms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether

done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the

shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped

and flirted him in the nose with the hog’s bladder, and lastly, for a final

resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, he

answered nothing else but this, By God, God, mad fool, beware the monk,

Buzansay hornpipe! These words thus finished, he slipped himself out of

the company, went aside, and, rattling the bladder, took a huge delight in

the melody of the rickling crackling noise of the peas. After which time

it lay not in the power of them all to draw out of his chaps the articulate

sound of one syllable, insomuch that, when Panurge went about to

interrogate him further, Triboulet drew his wooden sword, and would have

stuck him therewith. I have fished fair now, quoth Panurge, and brought my

pigs to a fine market. Have I not got a brave determination of all my

doubts, and a response in all things agreeable to the oracle that gave it?

He is a great fool, that is not to be denied, yet is he a greater fool who

brought him hither to me,--That bolt, quoth Carpalin, levels point-blank at

me,--but of the three I am the greatest fool, who did impart the secret of

my thoughts to such an idiot ass and native ninny.

Without putting ourselves to any stir or trouble in the least, quoth

Pantagruel, let us maturely and seriously consider and perpend the gestures

and speech which he hath made and uttered. In them, veritably, quoth he,

have I remarked and observed some excellent and notable mysteries; yea, of

such important worth and weight, that I shall never henceforth be

astonished, nor think strange, why the Turks with a great deal of worship

and reverence honour and respect natural fools equally with their primest

doctors, muftis, divines, and prophets. Did not you take heed, quoth he, a

little before he opened his mouth to speak, what a shogging, shaking, and

wagging his head did keep? By the approved doctrine of the ancient

philosophers, the customary ceremonies of the most expert magicians, and

the received opinions of the learnedest lawyers, such a brangling agitation

and moving should by us all be judged to proceed from, and be quickened and

suscitated by the coming and inspiration of the prophetizing and fatidical

spirit, which, entering briskly and on a sudden into a shallow receptacle

of a debile substance (for, as you know, and as the proverb shows it, a

little head containeth not much brains), was the cause of that commotion.

This is conform to what is avouched by the most skilful physicians, when

they affirm that shakings and tremblings fall upon the members of a human

body, partly because of the heaviness and violent impetuosity of the burden

and load that is carried, and, other part, by reason of the weakness and

imbecility that is in the virtue of the bearing organ. A manifest example

whereof appeareth in those who, fasting, are not able to carry to their

head a great goblet full of wine without a trembling and a shaking in the

hand that holds it. This of old was accounted a prefiguration and mystical

pointing out of the Pythian divineress, who used always, before the

uttering of a response from the oracle, to shake a branch of her domestic

laurel. Lampridius also testifieth that the Emperor Heliogabalus, to

acquire unto himself the reputation of a soothsayer, did, on several holy

days of prime solemnnity, in the presence of the fanatic rabble, make the

head of his idol by some slight within the body thereof publicly to shake.

Plautus, in his Asinaria, declareth likewise, that Saurias, whithersoever

he walked, like one quite distracted of his wits kept such a furious

lolling and mad-like shaking of his head, that he commonly affrighted those

who casually met with him in his way. The said author in another place,

showing a reason why Charmides shook and brangled his head, assevered that

he was transported and in an ecstasy. Catullus after the same manner

maketh mention, in his Berecynthia and Atys, of the place wherein the

Menades, Bacchical women, she-priests of the Lyaean god, and demented

prophetesses, carrying ivy boughs in their hands, did shake their heads.

As in the like case, amongst the Galli, the gelded priests of Cybele were

wont to do in the celebrating of their festivals. Whence, too, according

to the sense of the ancient theologues, she herself has her denomination,

for kubistan signifieth to turn round, whirl about, shake the head, and

play the part of one that is wry-necked.

Semblably Titus Livius writeth that, in the solemnization time of the

Bacchanalian holidays at Rome, both men and women seemed to prophetize and

vaticinate, because of an affected kind of wagging of the head, shrugging

of the shoulders, and jectigation of the whole body, which they used then

most punctually. For the common voice of the philosophers, together with

the opinion of the people, asserteth for an irrefragable truth that

vaticination is seldom by the heavens bestowed on any without the

concomitancy of a little frenzy and a head-shaking, not only when the said

presaging virtue is infused, but when the person also therewith inspired

declareth and manifesteth it unto others. The learned lawyer Julian, being

asked on a time if that slave might be truly esteemed to be healthful and

in a good plight who had not only conversed with some furious, maniac, and

enraged people, but in their company had also prophesied, yet without a

noddle-shaking concussion, answered that, seeing there was no head-wagging

at the time of his predictions, he might be held for sound and compotent

enough. Is it not daily seen how schoolmasters, teachers, tutors, and

instructors of children shake the heads of their disciples, as one would do

a pot in holding it by the lugs, that by this erection, vellication,

stretching, and pulling their ears, which, according to the doctrine of the

sage Egyptians, is a member consecrated to the memory, they may stir them

up to recollect their scattered thoughts, bring home those fancies of

theirs which perhaps have been extravagantly roaming abroad upon strange

and uncouth objects, and totally range their judgments, which possibly by

disordinate affections have been made wild, to the rule and pattern of a

wise, discreet, virtuous, and philosophical discipline. All which Virgil

acknowledgeth to be true, in the branglement of Apollo Cynthius.