第 一百一十九 章 · How Friar John merrily and s

Chapter 3.XXVII.

How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.

By Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear

friend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place. Only have

a special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of

the double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so

strongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean

thwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul. For if there pass long intervals

betwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too

large a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist

from giving suck to children--they lose their milk; and if continually thou

do not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy

lacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to

piss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar’s

scrip. This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it;

for myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do

what they would, because before they did not what they might have done: Ex

desuetudine amittuntur privilegia. Non-usage oftentimes destroys one’s

right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain

as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic

people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal

labouring. Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen,

idly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their

livelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches. Nay truly,

answered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for

thou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,

without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary

reservations. Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated

all the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did

intimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to

thee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou

hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,--in that point there

shall be no failing, I promise thee,--and shall have always by me pretty

girls clothed with the name of my wife’s waiting-maids, that, lying under

thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.

Let this serve for the first part of the sermon. Hearken, quoth Friar

John, to the oracle of the bells of Varenes. What say they? I hear and

understand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by my thirst, more

uprightly fatidical than that of Jove’s great kettles in Dodona. Hearken!

Take thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry; for if thou

marry, thou shalt find good therein, herein, here in a wife thou shalt find

good; so marry, marry. I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the

elements invite and prompt me to it. Let this word be to thee a brazen

wall, by diffidence not to be broken through. As for the second part of

this our doctrine,--thou seemest in some measure to mistrust the readiness

of my paternity in the practising of my placket-racket within the

Aphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if the stiff god of

gardens were not favourable to me. I pray thee, favour me so much as to

believe that I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments,

docile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things and everywhere, and

never stubborn or refractory to my will or pleasure. I need no more but to

let go the reins, and slacken the leash, which is the belly-point, and when

the game is shown unto him, say, Hey, Jack, to thy booty! he will not fail

even then to flesh himself upon his prey, and tuzzle it to some purpose.

Hereby you may perceive, although my future wife were as unsatiable and

gluttonous in her voluptuousness and the delights of venery as ever was the

Empress Messalina, or yet the Marchioness (of Oincester) in England, and I

desire thee to give credit to it, that I lack not for what is requisite to

overlay the stomach of her lust, but have wherewith aboundingly to please

her. I am not ignorant that Solomon said, who indeed of that matter

speaketh clerklike and learnedly,--as also how Aristotle after him declared

for a truth that, for the greater part, the lechery of a woman is ravenous

and unsatisfiable. Nevertheless, let such as are my friends who read those

passages receive from me for a most real verity, that I for such a Jill

have a fit Jack; and that, if women’s things cannot be satiated, I have an

instrument indefatigable,--an implement as copious in the giving as can in

craving be their vade mecums. Do not here produce ancient examples of the

paragons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability

the Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus

Caesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had

the vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian

trust the rogue,--the filthy ribald rascal is a liar. Nor shalt thou need

to urge authorities, or bring forth the instance of the Indian prince of

whom Theophrastus, Plinius, and Athenaeus testify, that with the help of a

certain herb he was able, and had given frequent experiments thereof, to

toss his sinewy piece of generation in the act of carnal concupiscence

above three score and ten times in the space of four-and-twenty hours. Of

that I believe nothing, the number is supposititious, and too prodigally

foisted in. Give no faith unto it, I beseech thee, but prithee trust me in

this, and thy credulity therein shall not be wronged, for it is true, and

probatum est, that my pioneer of nature--the sacred ithyphallian champion

--is of all stiff-intruding blades the primest. Come hither, my ballocket,

and hearken. Didst thou ever see the monk of Castre’s cowl? When in any

house it was laid down, whether openly in the view of all or covertly out

of the sight of any, such was the ineffable virtue thereof for excitating

and stirring up the people of both sexes unto lechery, that the whole

inhabitants and indwellers, not only of that, but likewise of all the

circumjacent places thereto, within three leagues around it, did suddenly

enter into rut, both beasts and folks, men and women, even to the dogs and

hogs, rats and cats.

I swear to thee that many times heretofore I have perceived and found in my

codpiece a certain kind of energy or efficacious virtue much more irregular

and of a greater anomaly than what I have related. I will not speak to

thee either of house or cottage, nor of church or market, but only tell

thee, that once at the representation of the Passion, which was acted at

Saint Maxents, I had no sooner entered within the pit of the theatre, but

that forthwith, by the virtue and occult property of it, on a sudden all

that were there, both players and spectators, did fall into such an

exorbitant temptation of lust, that there was not angel, man, devil, nor

deviless upon the place who would not then have bricollitched it with all

their heart and soul. The prompter forsook his copy, he who played

Michael’s part came down to rights, the devils issued out of hell and

carried along with them most of the pretty little girls that were there;

yea, Lucifer got out of his fetters; in a word, seeing the huge disorder, I

disparked myself forth of that enclosed place, in imitation of Cato the

Censor, who perceiving, by reason of his presence, the Floralian festivals

out of order, withdrew himself.