Chương Chương 88 · How Epistemon, who had his h

Chapter 2.XXX.

How Epistemon, who had his head cut off, was finely healed by Panurge, and

of the news which he brought from the devils, and of the damned people in

hell.

This gigantal victory being ended, Pantagruel withdrew himself to the place

of the flagons, and called for Panurge and the rest, who came unto him safe

and sound, except Eusthenes, whom one of the giants had scratched a little

in the face whilst he was about the cutting of his throat, and Epistemon,

who appeared not at all. Whereat Pantagruel was so aggrieved that he would

have killed himself. But Panurge said unto him, Nay, sir, stay a while,

and we will search for him amongst the dead, and find out the truth of all.

Thus as they went seeking after him, they found him stark dead, with his

head between his arms all bloody. Then Eusthenes cried out, Ah, cruel

death! hast thou taken from me the perfectest amongst men? At which words

Pantagruel rose up with the greatest grief that ever any man did see, and

said to Panurge, Ha, my friend! the prophecy of your two glasses and the

javelin staff was a great deal too deceitful. But Panurge answered, My

dear bullies all, weep not one drop more, for, he being yet all hot, I will

make him as sound as ever he was. In saying this, he took the head and

held it warm foregainst his codpiece, that the wind might not enter into

it. Eusthenes and Carpalin carried the body to the place where they had

banqueted, not out of any hope that ever he would recover, but that

Pantagruel might see it.

Nevertheless Panurge gave him very good comfort, saying, If I do not heal

him, I will be content to lose my head, which is a fool’s wager. Leave

off, therefore, crying, and help me. Then cleansed he his neck very well

with pure white wine, and, after that, took his head, and into it synapised

some powder of diamerdis, which he always carried about him in one of his

bags. Afterwards he anointed it with I know not what ointment, and set it

on very just, vein against vein, sinew against sinew, and spondyle against

spondyle, that he might not be wry-necked--for such people he mortally

hated. This done, he gave it round about some fifteen or sixteen stitches

with a needle that it might not fall off again; then, on all sides and

everywhere, he put a little ointment on it, which he called resuscitative.

Suddenly Epistemon began to breathe, then opened his eyes, yawned, sneezed,

and afterwards let a great household fart. Whereupon Panurge said, Now,

certainly, he is healed,--and therefore gave him to drink a large full

glass of strong white wine, with a sugared toast. In this fashion was

Epistemon finely healed, only that he was somewhat hoarse for above three

weeks together, and had a dry cough of which he could not be rid but by the

force of continual drinking. And now he began to speak, and said that he

had seen the devil, had spoken with Lucifer familiarly, and had been very

merry in hell and in the Elysian fields, affirming very seriously before

them all that the devils were boon companions and merry fellows. But, in

respect of the damned, he said he was very sorry that Panurge had so soon

called him back into this world again; for, said he, I took wonderful

delight to see them. How so? said Pantagruel. Because they do not use

them there, said Epistemon, so badly as you think they do. Their estate

and condition of living is but only changed after a very strange manner;

for I saw Alexander the Great there amending and patching on clouts upon

old breeches and stockings, whereby he got but a very poor living.

Xerxes was a crier of mustard.

Romulus, a salter and patcher of pattens.

Numa, a nailsmith.

Tarquin, a porter.

Piso, a clownish swain.

Sylla, a ferryman.

Cyrus, a cowherd.

Themistocles, a glass-maker.

Epaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses.

Brutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land.

Demosthenes, a vine-dresser.

Cicero, a fire-kindler.

Fabius, a threader of beads.

Artaxerxes, a rope-maker.

Aeneas, a miller.

Achilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles.

Agamemnon, a lick-box.

Ulysses, a hay-mower.

Nestor, a door-keeper or forester.

Darius, a gold-finder or jakes-farmer.

Ancus Martius, a ship-trimmer.

Camillus, a foot-post.

Marcellus, a sheller of beans.

Drusus, a taker of money at the doors of playhouses.

Scipio Africanus, a crier of lee in a wooden slipper.

Asdrubal, a lantern-maker.

Hannibal, a kettlemaker and seller of eggshells.

Priamus, a seller of old clouts.

Lancelot of the Lake was a flayer of dead horses.

All the Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row

over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my

lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in

the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice,

and oars at London. But with this difference, that these poor knights have

only for their fare a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel

of coarse mouldy bread.

Trajan was a fisher of frogs.

Antoninus, a lackey.

Commodus, a jet-maker.

Pertinax, a peeler of walnuts.

Lucullus, a maker of rattles and hawks’-bells.

Justinian, a pedlar.

Hector, a snap-sauce scullion.

Paris was a poor beggar.

Cambyses, a mule-driver.

Nero, a base blind fiddler, or player on that instrument which is called a

windbroach. Fierabras was his serving-man, who did him a thousand

mischievous tricks, and would make him eat of the brown bread and drink of

the turned wine when himself did both eat and drink of the best.

Julius Caesar and Pompey were boat-wrights and tighters of ships.

Valentine and Orson did serve in the stoves of hell, and were sweat-rubbers

in hot houses.

Giglan and Govian (Gauvin) were poor swineherds.

Geoffrey with the great tooth was a tinder-maker and seller of matches.

Godfrey de Bouillon, a hood-maker.

Jason was a bracelet-maker.

Don Pietro de Castille, a carrier of indulgences.

Morgan, a beer-brewer.

Huon of Bordeaux, a hooper of barrels.

Pyrrhus, a kitchen-scullion.

Antiochus, a chimney-sweeper.

Octavian, a scraper of parchment.

Nerva, a mariner.

Pope Julius was a crier of pudding-pies, but he left off wearing there his

great buggerly beard.

John of Paris was a greaser of boots.

Arthur of Britain, an ungreaser of caps.

Perce-Forest, a carrier of faggots.

Pope Boniface the Eighth, a scummer of pots.

Pope Nicholas the Third, a maker of paper.

Pope Alexander, a ratcatcher.

Pope Sixtus, an anointer of those that have the pox.

What, said Pantagruel, have they the pox there too? Surely, said

Epistemon, I never saw so many: there are there, I think, above a hundred

millions; for believe, that those who have not had the pox in this world

must have it in the other.

Cotsbody, said Panurge, then I am free; for I have been as far as the hole

of Gibraltar, reached unto the outmost bounds of Hercules, and gathered of

the ripest.

Ogier the Dane was a furbisher of armour.

The King Tigranes, a mender of thatched houses.

Galien Restored, a taker of moldwarps.

The four sons of Aymon were all toothdrawers.

Pope Calixtus was a barber of a woman’s sine qua non.

Pope Urban, a bacon-picker.

Melusina was a kitchen drudge-wench.

Matabrune, a laundress.

Cleopatra, a crier of onions.

Helen, a broker for chambermaids.

Semiramis, the beggars’ lice-killer.

Dido did sell mushrooms.

Penthesilea sold cresses.

Lucretia was an alehouse-keeper.

Hortensia, a spinstress.

Livia, a grater of verdigris.

After this manner, those that had been great lords and ladies here, got but

a poor scurvy wretched living there below. And, on the contrary, the

philosophers and others, who in this world had been altogether indigent and

wanting, were great lords there in their turn. I saw Diogenes there strut

it out most pompously, and in great magnificence, with a rich purple gown

on him, and a golden sceptre in his right hand. And, which is more, he

would now and then make Alexander the Great mad, so enormously would he

abuse him when he had not well patched his breeches; for he used to pay his

skin with sound bastinadoes. I saw Epictetus there, most gallantly

apparelled after the French fashion, sitting under a pleasant arbour, with

store of handsome gentlewomen, frolicking, drinking, dancing, and making

good cheer, with abundance of crowns of the sun. Above the lattice were

written these verses for his device:

To leap and dance, to sport and play,

And drink good wine both white and brown,

Or nothing else do all the day

But tell bags full of many a crown.

When he saw me, he invited me to drink with him very courteously, and I

being willing to be entreated, we tippled and chopined together most

theologically. In the meantime came Cyrus to beg one farthing of him for

the honour of Mercury, therewith to buy a few onions for his supper. No,

no, said Epictetus, I do not use in my almsgiving to bestow farthings.

Hold, thou varlet, there’s a crown for thee; be an honest man. Cyrus was

exceeding glad to have met with such a booty; but the other poor rogues,

the kings that are there below, as Alexander, Darius, and others, stole it

away from him by night. I saw Pathelin, the treasurer of Rhadamanthus,

who, in cheapening the pudding-pies that Pope Julius cried, asked him how

much a dozen. Three blanks, said the Pope. Nay, said Pathelin, three

blows with a cudgel. Lay them down here, you rascal, and go fetch more.

The poor Pope went away weeping, who, when he came to his master, the

pie-maker, told him that they had taken away his pudding-pies. Whereupon

his master gave him such a sound lash with an eel-skin, that his own would

have been worth nothing to make bag-pipe-bags of. I saw Master John Le

Maire there personate the Pope in such fashion that he made all the poor

kings and popes of this world kiss his feet, and, taking great state upon

him, gave them his benediction, saying, Get the pardons, rogues, get the

pardons; they are good cheap. I absolve you of bread and pottage, and

dispense with you to be never good for anything. Then, calling Caillet and

Triboulet to him, he spoke these words, My lords the cardinals, despatch

their bulls, to wit, to each of them a blow with a cudgel upon the reins.

Which accordingly was forthwith performed. I heard Master Francis Villon

ask Xerxes, How much the mess of mustard? A farthing, said Xerxes. To

which the said Villon answered, The pox take thee for a villain! As much of

square-eared wheat is not worth half that price, and now thou offerest to

enhance the price of victuals. With this he pissed in his pot, as the

mustard-makers of Paris used to do. I saw the trained bowman of the bathing

tub, known by the name of the Francarcher de Baignolet, who, being one of

the trustees of the Inquisition, when he saw Perce-Forest making water

against a wall in which was painted the fire of St. Anthony, declared him

heretic, and would have caused him to be burnt alive had it not been for

Morgant, who, for his proficiat and other small fees, gave him nine tuns of

beer.

Well, said Pantagruel, reserve all these fair stories for another time,

only tell us how the usurers are there handled. I saw them, said

Epistemon, all very busily employed in seeking of rusty pins and old nails

in the kennels of the streets, as you see poor wretched rogues do in this

world. But the quintal, or hundredweight, of this old ironware is there

valued but at the price of a cantle of bread, and yet they have but a very

bad despatch and riddance in the sale of it. Thus the poor misers are

sometimes three whole weeks without eating one morsel or crumb of bread,

and yet work both day and night, looking for the fair to come.

Nevertheless, of all this labour, toil, and misery, they reckon nothing, so

cursedly active they are in the prosecution of that their base calling, in

hopes, at the end of the year, to earn some scurvy penny by it.

Come, said Pantagruel, let us now make ourselves merry one bout, and drink,

my lads, I beseech you, for it is very good drinking all this month. Then

did they uncase their flagons by heaps and dozens, and with their

leaguer-provision made excellent good cheer. But the poor King Anarchus

could not all this while settle himself towards any fit of mirth; whereupon

Panurge said, Of what trade shall we make my lord the king here, that he may

be skilful in the art when he goes thither to sojourn amongst all the devils

of hell? Indeed, said Pantagruel, that was well advised of thee. Do with

him what thou wilt, I give him to thee. Gramercy, said Panurge, the present

is not to be refused, and I love it from you.