jurandi) I shall not raise her again by my crying:
she is well, she is in paradise at least, if she
be no higher: she prayeth to God for us, she
is happy, she is above the sense of our miseries,
nor can our calamities reach her. What though
she be dead, must not we also die? The same debt
which she hath paid hangs over our heads; nature will
require it of us, and we must all of us some day taste
of the same sauce. Let her pass then, and the
Lord preserve the survivors; for I must now cast about
how to get another wife. But I will tell you
what you shall do, said he to the midwives, in France
called wise women (where be they, good folks?
I cannot see them): Go you to my wife’s
interment, and I will the while rock my son; for I
find myself somewhat altered and distempered, and
should otherwise be in danger of falling sick; but
drink one good draught first, you will be the better
for it. And believe me, upon mine honour, they
at his request went to her burial and funeral obsequies.
In the meanwhile, poor Gargantua staying at home,
and willing to have somewhat in remembrance of her
to be engraven upon her tomb, made this epitaph in
the manner as followeth.
Dead is the noble Badebec,
Who had a face like a rebeck;
A Spanish body, and a belly
Of Switzerland; she died, I tell ye,
In childbirth. Pray to God, that
her
He pardon wherein she did err.
Here lies her body, which did live
Free from all vice, as I believe,
And did decease at my bedside,
The year and day in which
she died.
Of the infancy of Pantagruel.
I find by the ancient historiographers and poets that
divers have been born in this world after very strange
manners, which would be too long to repeat; read therefore
the seventh chapter of Pliny, if you have so much
leisure. Yet have you never heard of any so wonderful
as that of Pantagruel; for it is a very difficult
matter to believe, how in the little time he was in
his mother’s belly he grew both in body and strength.
That which Hercules did was nothing, when in his
cradle he slew two serpents, for those serpents were
but little and weak, but Pantagruel, being yet in
the cradle, did far more admirable things, and more
to be amazed at. I pass by here the relation
of how at every one of his meals he supped up the
milk of four thousand and six hundred cows, and how,
to make him a skillet to boil his milk in, there were
set a-work all the braziers of Somure in Anjou, of
Villedieu in Normandy, and of Bramont in Lorraine.
And they served in this whitepot-meat to him in a
huge great bell, which is yet to be seen in the city
of Bourges in Berry, near the palace, but his teeth
were already so well grown, and so strengthened with
vigour, that of the said bell he bit off a great morsel,
as very plainly doth appear till this hour.
