第 一百一十一 章 · How Pantagruel praiseth the

Chapter 3.XIX.

How Pantagruel praiseth the counsel of dumb men.

Pantagruel, when this discourse was ended, held for a pretty while his

peace, seeming to be exceeding sad and pensive, then said to Panurge, The

malignant spirit misleads, beguileth, and seduceth you. I have read that

in times past the surest and most veritable oracles were not those which

either were delivered in writing or uttered by word of mouth in speaking.

For many times, in their interpretation, right witty, learned, and

ingenious men have been deceived through amphibologies, equivoques, and

obscurity of words, no less than by the brevity of their sentences. For

which cause Apollo, the god of vaticination, was surnamed Loxias. Those

which were represented then by signs and outward gestures were accounted

the truest and the most infallible. Such was the opinion of Heraclitus.

And Jupiter did himself in this manner give forth in Ammon frequently

predictions. Nor was he single in this practice; for Apollo did the like

amongst the Assyrians. His prophesying thus unto those people moved them

to paint him with a large long beard, and clothes beseeming an old settled

person of a most posed, staid, and grave behaviour; not naked, young, and

beardless, as he was portrayed most usually amongst the Grecians. Let us

make trial of this kind of fatidicency; and go you take advice of some dumb

person without any speaking. I am content, quoth Panurge. But, says

Pantagruel, it were requisite that the dumb you consult with be such as

have been deaf from the hour of their nativity, and consequently dumb; for

none can be so lively, natural, and kindly dumb as he who never heard.

How is it, quoth Panurge, that you conceive this matter? If you apprehend

it so, that never any spoke who had not before heard the speech of others,

I will from that antecedent bring you to infer very logically a most absurd

and paradoxical conclusion. But let it pass; I will not insist on it. You

do not then believe what Herodotus wrote of two children, who, at the

special command and appointment of Psammeticus, King of Egypt, having been

kept in a petty country cottage, where they were nourished and entertained

in a perpetual silence, did at last, after a certain long space of time,

pronounce this word Bec, which in the Phrygian language signifieth bread.

Nothing less, quoth Pantagruel, do I believe than that it is a mere abusing

of our understandings to give credit to the words of those who say that

there is any such thing as a natural language. All speeches have had their

primary origin from the arbitrary institutions, accords, and agreements of

nations in their respective condescendments to what should be noted and

betokened by them. An articulate voice, according to the dialecticians,

hath naturally no signification at all; for that the sense and meaning

thereof did totally depend upon the good will and pleasure of the first

deviser and imposer of it. I do not tell you this without a cause; for

Bartholus, Lib. 5. de Verb. Oblig., very seriously reporteth that even in

his time there was in Eugubia one named Sir Nello de Gabrielis, who,

although he by a sad mischance became altogether deaf, understood

nevertheless everyone that talked in the Italian dialect howsoever he

expressed himself; and that only by looking on his external gestures, and

casting an attentive eye upon the divers motions of his lips and chaps. I

have read, I remember also, in a very literate and eloquent author, that

Tyridates, King of Armenia, in the days of Nero, made a voyage to Rome,

where he was received with great honour and solemnity, and with all manner

of pomp and magnificence. Yea, to the end there might be a sempiternal

amity and correspondence preserved betwixt him and the Roman senate, there

was no remarkable thing in the whole city which was not shown unto him. At

his departure the emperor bestowed upon him many ample donatives of an

inestimable value; and besides, the more entirely to testify his affection

towards him, heartily entreated him to be pleased to make choice of any

whatsoever thing in Rome was most agreeable to his fancy, with a promise

juramentally confirmed that he should not be refused of his demand.

Thereupon, after a suitable return of thanks for a so gracious offer, he

required a certain Jack-pudding whom he had seen to act his part most

egregiously upon the stage, and whose meaning, albeit he knew not what it

was he had spoken, he understood perfectly enough by the signs and

gesticulations which he had made. And for this suit of his, in that he

asked nothing else, he gave this reason, that in the several wide and

spacious dominions which were reduced under the sway and authority of his

sovereign government, there were sundry countries and nations much

differing from one another in language, with whom, whether he was to speak

unto them or give any answer to their requests, he was always necessitated

to make use of divers sorts of truchman and interpreters. Now with this

man alone, sufficient for supplying all their places, will that great

inconveniency hereafter be totally removed; seeing he is such a fine

gesticulator, and in the practice of chirology an artist so complete,

expert, and dexterous, that with his very fingers he doth speak.

Howsoever, you are to pitch upon such a dumb one as is deaf by nature and

from his birth; to the end that his gestures and signs may be the more

vively and truly prophetic, and not counterfeit by the intermixture of some

adulterate lustre and affectation. Yet whether this dumb person shall be

of the male or female sex is in your option, lieth at your discretion, and

altogether dependeth on your own election.

I would more willingly, quoth Panurge, consult with and be advised by a

dumb woman, were it not that I am afraid of two things. The first is, that

the greater part of women, whatever be that they see, do always represent

unto their fancies, think, and imagine, that it hath some relation to the

sugared entering of the goodly ithyphallos, and graffing in the cleft of

the overturned tree the quickset imp of the pin of copulation. Whatever

signs, shows, or gestures we shall make, or whatever our behaviour,

carriage, or demeanour shall happen to be in their view and presence, they

will interpret the whole in reference to the act of androgynation and the

culbutizing exercise, by which means we shall be abusively disappointed of

our designs, in regard that she will take all our signs for nothing else

but tokens and representations of our desire to entice her unto the lists

of a Cyprian combat or catsenconny skirmish. Do you remember what happened

at Rome two hundred and threescore years after the foundation thereof? A

young Roman gentleman encountering by chance, at the foot of Mount Celion,

with a beautiful Latin lady named Verona, who from her very cradle upwards

had always been both deaf and dumb, very civilly asked her, not without a

chironomatic Italianizing of his demand, with various jectigation of his

fingers and other gesticulations as yet customary amongst the speakers of

that country, what senators in her descent from the top of the hill she had

met with going up thither. For you are to conceive that he, knowing no

more of her deafness than dumbness, was ignorant of both. She in the

meantime, who neither heard nor understood so much as one word of what he

had said, straight imagined, by all that she could apprehend in the lovely

gesture of his manual signs, that what he then required of her was what

herself had a great mind to, even that which a young man doth naturally

desire of a woman. Then was it that by signs, which in all occurrences of

venereal love are incomparably more attractive, valid, and efficacious than

words, she beckoned to him to come along with her to her house; which when

he had done, she drew him aside to a privy room, and then made a most

lively alluring sign unto him to show that the game did please her.

Whereupon, without any more advertisement, or so much as the uttering of

one word on either side, they fell to and bringuardized it lustily.

The other cause of my being averse from consulting with dumb women is, that

to our signs they would make no answer at all, but suddenly fall backwards

in a divarication posture, to intimate thereby unto us the reality of their

consent to the supposed motion of our tacit demands. Or if they should

chance to make any countersigns responsory to our propositions, they would

prove so foolish, impertinent, and ridiculous, that by them ourselves

should easily judge their thoughts to have no excursion beyond the duffling

academy. You know very well how at Brignoles, when the religious nun,

Sister Fatbum, was made big with child by the young Stiffly-stand-to’t, her

pregnancy came to be known, and she cited by the abbess, and, in a full

convention of the convent, accused of incest. Her excuse was that she did

not consent thereto, but that it was done by the violence and impetuous

force of the Friar Stiffly-stand-to’t. Hereto the abbess very austerely

replying, Thou naughty wicked girl, why didst thou not cry, A rape, a rape!

then should all of us have run to thy succour. Her answer was that the

rape was committed in the dortour, where she durst not cry because it was a

place of sempiternal silence. But, quoth the abbess, thou roguish wench,

why didst not thou then make some sign to those that were in the next

chamber beside thee? To this she answered that with her buttocks she made

a sign unto them as vigorously as she could, yet never one of them did so

much as offer to come to her help and assistance. But, quoth the abbess,

thou scurvy baggage, why didst thou not tell it me immediately after the

perpetration of the fact, that so we might orderly, regularly, and

canonically have accused him? I would have done so, had the case been

mine, for the clearer manifestation of mine innocency. I truly, madam,

would have done the like with all my heart and soul, quoth Sister Fatbum,

but that fearing I should remain in sin, and in the hazard of eternal

damnation, if prevented by a sudden death, I did confess myself to the

father friar before he went out of the room, who, for my penance, enjoined

me not to tell it, or reveal the matter unto any. It were a most enormous

and horrid offence, detestable before God and the angels, to reveal a

confession. Such an abominable wickedness would have possibly brought down

fire from heaven, wherewith to have burnt the whole nunnery, and sent us

all headlong to the bottomless pit, to bear company with Korah, Dathan, and

Abiram.

You will not, quoth Pantagruel, with all your jesting, make me laugh. I

know that all the monks, friars, and nuns had rather violate and infringe

the highest of the commandments of God than break the least of their

provincial statutes. Take you therefore Goatsnose, a man very fit for your

present purpose; for he is, and hath been, both dumb and deaf from the very

remotest infancy of his childhood.