Diavolo, is there no more must?  No more sweet wine?  Germinavit radix Jesse.  Je renie ma vie, je meurs de soif; I renounce my life, I rage for thirst.  This wine is none of the worst.  What wine drink you at Paris?  I give myself to the devil, if I did not once keep open house at Paris for all comers six months together.  Do you know Friar Claude of the high kilderkins?  Oh the good fellow that he is!  But I do not know what fly hath stung him of late, he is become so hard a student.  For my part, I study not at all.  In our abbey we never study for fear of the mumps, which disease in horses is called the mourning in the chine.  Our late abbot was wont to say that it is a monstrous thing to see a learned monk.  By G—­, master, my friend, Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes.  You never saw so many hares as there are this year.  I could not anywhere come by a goshawk nor tassel of falcon.  My Lord Belloniere promised me a lanner, but he wrote to me not long ago that he was become pursy.  The partridges will so multiply henceforth, that they will go near to eat up our ears.  I take no delight in the stalking-horse, for I catch such cold that I am like to founder myself at that sport.  If I do not run, toil, travel, and trot about, I am not well at ease.  True it is that in leaping over the hedges and bushes my frock leaves always some of its wool behind it.  I have recovered a dainty greyhound; I give him to the devil, if he suffer a hare to escape him.  A groom was leading him to my Lord Huntlittle, and I robbed him of him.  Did I ill?  No, Friar John, said Gymnast, no, by all the devils that are, no!  So, said the monk, do I attest these same devils so long as they last, or rather, virtue (of) G—­, what could that gouty limpard have done with so fine a dog?  By the body of G—­, he is better pleased when one presents him with a good yoke of oxen.  How now, said Ponocrates, you swear, Friar John.  It is only, said the monk, but to grace and adorn my speech.  They are colours of a Ciceronian rhetoric.

Chapter 1.XL.

Why monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore some have bigger noses than others.

By the faith of a Christian, said Eudemon, I do wonderfully dote and enter in a great ecstasy when I consider the honesty and good fellowship of this monk, for he makes us here all merry.  How is it, then, that they exclude the monks from all good companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of mirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as the bees drive away the drones from their hives?  Ignavum fucos pecus, said Maro, a praesepibus arcent.  Hereunto, answered Gargantua, there is nothing so true as that the frock and cowl draw unto itself the opprobries, injuries, and maledictions of the world, just as the wind called Cecias attracts the clouds.  The peremptory reason is, because they eat the ordure and excrements of the world, that is to say, the sins