‘“Ha, my friend,” he said, “I beg you to do so! Do it, and I’ll give you my purse. Here it is. Take it. There are six hundred gold seraphs inside and a few diamonds and rubies which are all quite perfect.”’
‘And where are they now?’ said Epistemon.
‘By Saint John,’ said Panurge, ‘a long way off if they are still in circulation! [But where are the snows of yesteryear? That was the great preoccupation of Villon, our Parisian poet.]’
‘Finish the tale, I beg you,’ said Pantagruel, ‘so that we may know how you dealt with your pasha.’
‘On my faith as a decent fellow,’ said Panurge, ‘I tell no word of a lie: I bind him with a pair of dirty Turkish trousers, which I find lying there half burnt. With my ropes I truss him up so well, country-fashion, hand and foot, that he cannot budge. Then I thrust my skewer through his gullet and hang him up, hooking the skewer on to two big clamps used for holding halberds. Then I stoke up a roaring fire underneath him and flambé my Lord as we do with smoked herrings in our chimneys. Then, grabbing his purse and a little javelin lying on the clamps, I sped off at a fine canter. And God knows how I stank like a shoulder of mutton.
‘Once down in the road, I found that everyone had run up with plenty of water to douse the fire. When they saw me half-roasted like that, they took pity on me – naturally – and chucked all their water over me, making me delightfully cool; which did me much good. Then they gave me a little food, but I scarcely ate any, since, as is their custom, they offered me nothing to drink but water.
‘They did me no further harm, except for one ugly little hunch-breasted Turk who was furtively munching my bacon. I gave him such a green thwack on the fingers with my javelin that he never tried that on again! Then a young German maiden58 brought me a jar of emblic myrobalans pickled in the local style, only to stare at my fly-bitten johnnie as it had escaped from the fire, for now it dangled no lower than my knees.
[‘It is worth noting that I had suffered from sciatica for over seven years but that fire entirely cured it on the side which that turnspit of mine had allowed to sear when he dozed off.]
‘Now while they were lingering over me, the fire won the day – ask me not how – spreading to over two thousand houses before one of the crowd noticed it and shouted, “By the guts of Mahoun! All the town is burning, and here we are hanging about!”
‘So off they went, every man to his manor.
‘As for me, I made my way to the town-gate.
‘When I was on a nearby hummock, I turned round like Lot’s wife and saw the whole town ablaze like Sodom and Gomorrah.59
‘I was so happy at it that I nearly shat myself for joy. But God thoroughly punished me for that.’
‘How!’ asked Pantagruel.
‘Well,’ said Panurge, ‘while I was thus contemplating the flames with great delight and joking with myself, saying: “Ha! Poor little fleas! Poor little mice! You’re in for a rotten winter: the fire has got into your bed-straw,” six hundred [or rather thirteen hundred and eleven] dogs came out of the town, big and small, all in one pack, fleeing from that conflagration. At their first sight of me they came right at me, following the flair of my rotten old half-roasted flesh. They would have gobbled me up there and then if my good guardian angel had not inspired me.’60
‘And what did you do then, poor chap?’ said Pantagruel.
‘I suddenly thought of my rashers of bacon and tossed them into the midst of them. Those curs then bared their fangs and fought one against another over those rashers. And in that way they left me – and I leave them too, scrapping with each other.
‘And thus do I escape, lively and joyful. [And long life to roasting!]’
How Panurge taught quite a new way to build the walls of Paris
CHAPTER 11
[Becomes Chapter 15.
A tale in the current tradition of jokes about pudenda and the women of Paris. In the only extant copy of the first edition of Pantagruel, the page on which most of this tale was printed was so heavily censored that it became detached and lost, leaving signs of the censor’s ink on the facing pages. To fill the gap editors follow the second edition. Rabelais made several excisions, all prudential, none ‘obscene’.
The chapter is best replaced in the tradition of the Querelle des Femmes, a quarrel about the status of women which produced bawdy at one extreme and a platonizing idealization of women at the other.
La Follie-Gobelin was a bawdy house in the present rue des Gobelins.
Erasmus supplies the remark of Agesilaus (Adages, III, V, VII, ‘A wall of iron not turf’; and Apophthegms I, Agesilas 30).]
Pantagruel, seeking recreation from his studies one day, was strolling towards the Faubourg Saint-Marcel intending to have a look at La Follie-Gobelin. Panurge was with him, still carrying a bottle under his cloak and a piece of salted ham, for he never went without them. He called them his bodyguard: and no other sword did he bear. When Pantagruel wanted to give him a sword, he retorted that it would inflame his spleen.
‘All very well,’ said Epistemon; ‘but how will you defend yourself if anyone attacks you?’
‘With a quick bit of shoe-work,’ said Panurge, ‘provided that stabbing is outlawed!’
On the way back Panurge contemplated the walls of Paris and said mockingly to Pantagruel:
‘Lovely walls, aren’t they! Solid enough to protect moulting goslings! By my beard, they’re quite rotten enough for such a great city as this, since with a single fart a cow could blow down more than six arm-spans of them.’
‘My dear friend,’ said Pantagruel, ‘do you really not know what Argesilaus replied when they asked him why the great city of Sparta was not surrounded by walls? He said, pointing to the inhabitants and citizens of that city, who were so experienced in the art of war, so strong and well armed: “These folk are the walls of our city,” meaning that there are no walls like backbones, and that towns [and cities] can have no more sure and solid rampart than the valour of their [citizens and] inhabitants.
Thus our city is so strong from the multitude of warriors within her that they never bother to build other walls. Besides, should anyone want to throw a wall right round it as at Strasbourg, [Orleans or Ferrara,] it would not be possible: the cost [and outlay] would be excessive.’
‘True enough,’ said Panurge, ‘but it is nice to have some semblance of stone-work when your enemies invade you, if only to shout down, “Who goes there?” As for the enormous expenditure you deem necessary if anyone wanted to throw walls round it, why! if the Magistrates will tip me with a goodly jar of wine, I’ll teach them a most novel method of building them cheaply.’
‘How then?’ asked Pantagruel.
‘If I tell you, don’t repeat it,’ Panurge replied.
‘I have noticed that, in this town, the thingummybobs of women are cheaper than stone. You should build walls of them, arranging them with good architectural symmetry, putting the biggest ones in the front ranks, then sloping them back upwards like the spine of a donkey, making ranks of the medium ones next and finally of the smallest. Then provide an interlarding of some nice little diamond-pointings as in the great tower of Bourges, and with as many cocks as were lopped off from wretched Italians at the Entry of the queen into that town.61
What devil could ever bring down such walls! No metal could withstand blows better. And if cannon balls came and rubbed up against them, you would, by God, see some of that blessèd fruit of the great-pox distilled fine as rain! Cor! In the devil’s name! Moreover lightning will never strike them. Why? Because they are all holy or blessèd!
I can see only one drawback.’
‘Hο, ho! Ha, ha, ha!’ said Pantagruel. ‘What is that?’
‘Well, the flies find them wonderfully tasty: they would all readily gather round and leave their droppings. The work would be ruined and slighted. This is how you could remedy that: you would have to flick away the flies with beautiful fox-tails or good fat pricks from Provençal donkeys.
??
?But on that subject, as we go back to supper, I can tell you a fine exemplary tale, [which Friar Lubinus includes in his book On the Compotations of the Mendicant Friars].
‘Once upon a time, when beasts could talk (less than three days ago) a poor lion was strolling through the forest of Bièvre saying his little prayers. He passed under a tree into which a villein (a charcoal-burner) had climbed to lop off some wood. When he saw the lion, he hurled his axe at him, giving him an enormous wound in the thigh. So that limping lion ran here and there through the forest to find some help until he came upon a carpenter who kindly looked at his wound, cleaned it out as best as he could and padded it with moss, telling him to swish that wound well to stop the flies from settling their bums on it.62
‘Meanwhile he would go and gather some carpenter’s-self-heal.
‘And so that lion, cured, was strolling through the forest at the time when some ageless old woman was cutting twigs and gathering sticks in that very forest. When she saw that lion she fell backwards from fright in such a way that the wind blew her skirts, petticoat and chemise up over her shoulders.
‘When he saw that happen the lion felt pity and came running up to find out whether she had done herself any harm. He contemplated her country-thing and said, “You poor woman! Who gave you that wound?”
‘As he was saying that, he saw a fox and called him over: “Brother Renard. Hey! Here! Over here! There’s good reason.”
‘When Renard came up, the lion said:
‘“My fellow and friend, someone has given this good woman a nasty wound between her legs. There is a manifest dissolution of continuity. See how big the wound is: from her bottom to her navel it measures four, no, a good five-and-a-half spans. It’s a blow from an axe. I fear it may be an old wound, so to keep the flies off, give it a good whisking inside and out. You have a bush fine and long. Whisk away; whisk away I beg you, while I go looking for moss to put in it. We ought to thus succour and help one another. God commands us to.63
‘“Whisk hard; that’s right my friend, whisk hard; that wound needs frequent whisking: otherwise the person cannot be made comfortable. Whisk well, my good little comrade, whisk on. God has given you a brush; yours is becomingly grand and gross. Whisk away, and never tire. [A good Fly-whisker, ever whisking flies with his tassel, himself will ne’er fly-whiskèd be. Whisk away, well-hung! Whisk away my little dear!] I won’t keep you long.”
‘Then he went off in search of plenty of moss. When he was some little way off he cried back to Renard:
‘“Comrade, keep on whisking. Whisk on, my good little comrade, and never tire. I’ll get you appointed stipendiary Whisker to Queen Maria and Don Pedro of Castille.64 Only go on whisking, go on whisking, and do nothing else.”
‘Poor Renard went on whisking; and he did it very well, this way and that way, inside and outside, but that naughty old woman stank like a hundred devils as she [constantly] broke wind and let off farts. Poor Renard was most ill at ease, for he knew not which way to turn to evade the perfume of the wind of that old woman. Now as he turned aside he saw that there was yet another hole behind, not as large as the one he was whisking but that the foul stinking wind came forth from there.
‘At last the lion returned, bringing more than three bales of moss,65 and began to thrust some of it into the wound with a stake he was carrying; he had already stuffed in two bales and a half66 when he cried in amazement,
‘“What the devil! This wound is a deep one! More than two wagon-loads of moss could get in there. Ah, well. Since God so wishes…”67 And he went on stuffing it in.
‘But the Renard warned him:
‘“O Lion, my comrade and friend, do not, I beseech you, stuff all the moss in there: keep a bit of it back, for there is another little hole down below which stinks like a hundred devils. The stench is so awful it’s poisoning me.”
‘So we had better protect those walls from flies and employ some stipendiary Fly-whiskers.’
Pantagruel then said,
‘And how do you know that the private parts of women are going so cheap? In this town there are plenty of decent women, virgin and chaste.’
‘But where-um find ‘em?’ asked Panurge. ‘I’ll tell you something: not my opinion but something truly sure and certain. I am not boasting when I say that I have stuffed four hundred and seventeen of them since I have been in this town – women theologians, kissers of images –68and that’s for only nine days!
‘Why, this very morning I came across a man who had a beggar’s wallet slung over his shoulder as in Aesop’s Fables. He was carrying two little girls, two or three years old at most. One was in the front pouch, the other in the back one. He begged me for alms, but I told him I had far more bollocks than pence. Afterwards I asked him:
‘“My good man, are those little maids still virgins?”
‘“Brother of mine,” he said, “I have been carrying them about like this for two years now: as for this one here in the front whom I can see all the time, yes, I think she is, though I would never swear to it, finger in pyre. As for the one I carry behind, I simply do not know.”
‘You are truly a fine companion,’ said Pantagruel. ‘I would like to dress you in my livery.’
And he did have him finely accoutred in the style then current, except that Panurge wanted the codpiece on his breeches to be three foot long, and square, not round.
And thus it was fashioned.
And it was fair to behold.
And often would he say that people had not yet learnt the advantages and utility to be found in wearing a huge codpiece. But, one day, Time would tell them, since all things have been discovered by Time.
‘God save from harm,’ he would say, ‘that fellow whose long codpiece saved his life!
‘God save from harm that man whose long codpiece was worth to him one day a hundred [and sixty thousand and nine] crowns.
‘God save from harm that man who, with the help of his long codpiece, saved an entire town from dying of hunger.
‘When I have a bit more time, I will, by God, put it all into a book called On the Benefits of Long Codpieces.’
And he did indeed write a big and beautiful book on the subject, with illustrations. As far as I know it has yet to be printed.
On the morals and characteristics of Panurge
CHAPTER 12
[Becomes Chapter 16.
The ‘malady’ named ‘shortage of silver’ in the first paragraph is both shortage of cash and uncured syphilis, which was treated by silver and quicksilver. In that context Rabelais cites a widely known song, ‘Faulte d’argent, c’est douleur nonpareil’ (Shortage of Silver – of cash, or of a treatment for syphilis – as pain ‘tis nonpareil). It had been delightfully set to music by Josquin des Prez.
‘But that apart, the nicest young lad in the world’ is a quip best known from Clément Marot’s ironical judgement on his thieving Basque valet.
Jests at the expense of the Sorbonne and theologians generally are later suppressed, all of them. But the University Quarter, the Quartier Latin and its colleges, streets and alleyways remain the background to the story.
Rabelais replaced ‘Fontarabia’ with ‘Foutignan and Foutarabia’ so as to introduce a standard play on the verb foutre (to fuck).]
Panurge was of medium height, neither too tall nor too short. His nose, rather aquiline, was shaped like the handle of a razor; he was then about thirty-five years old and as fit to be gilded as a leaden dagger! In his person he was quite an elegant man except that he was just a bit of a rake and naturally subject to a malady which was called in those days,
Shortage of silver: as pain ‘tis nonpareil.
However he knew sixty-three ways of raising money for his needs, the most honourable and most routine of which took the style of stealing, done with stealth. He was [, if ever there was such a one in Paris,] a felon, [a cheat, a tippler,] a loafer, a scrounger,
[but that apart, the nicest young lad in the world.]
And he was always
involved in some machination or other against the bum-bailiffs and the Watch.
On one occasion he got three or four fine rascals together and made them drink like Knights Templar late into the evening, afterwards bringing them just below Sainte-Geneviève or close to the Collège de Navarre; then, as the Watch were making their way up – he knew when by placing his sword on the pavement and putting his ear to it: if he heard the sword vibrate that was an infallible sign that the Watch were near at hand – he and his companions got hold of a dung-cart and gave it a mighty shove, sending it rushing downhill, thus knocking all those wretched officers of the Watch to the ground like porkers. Then he fled down the other side, for in less than two days he knew the streets, alleyways and passages of Paris as well as he knew his grace after dinner. On another occasion, he laid a trail of gunpowder in a fine square that the Watch had to pass through, and just as they were doing so he set a match to it, making a pastime of seeing how gracefully they fled away convinced that Saint-Anthony’s wildfire had got them by the legs. As for the wretched Masters of Arts and the Theologians he tormented them more than all the others.69
Whenever he met any of them in the street, he never failed to play some prank on them, sometimes dropping a turd into their graduate’s hoods, sometimes tying little fox-brushes or hares’ ears on to their backs, or doing some other prank.
One day, when all the Theologians were assigned to assemble in the Sorbonne to examine the articles of the faith,70 he prepared a Bourbonese marmalade out of a mess of garlic, Persian gum, assa-foetida, oil of castor and still-tepid turds; he steeped it all in puss from cankered ulcers and, very early in the morning, theologically smeared and anointed all the gratings of the Sorbonne with it.71 The devil himself could not have endured it. And all those fine folk were soon puking in front of everyone else as though they had been flaying foxes; some ten or a dozen of them died of the plague, [fourteen caught leprosy; twenty-two developed the gout and more than twenty-seven caught the pox,] but Panurge cared not a jot. [And he normally carried a whip under his gown: with it he would unremittingly flog any scouts he met carrying wine to their masters – to hurry them along.]