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
