distracted with sudden affrightments, he would startle
and say that Pantagruel held him by the neck.
Besides that, it procured him a continual drought
and desire to drink, so that after some few years he
died of the death Roland, in plain English called
thirst, a work of divine vengeance, showing us that
which saith the philosopher and Aulus Gellius, that
it becometh us to speak according to the common language;
and that we should, as said Octavian Augustus, strive
to shun all strange and unknown terms with as much
heedfulness and circumspection as pilots of ships use
to avoid the rocks and banks in the sea.
Chapter 2.VII.
How Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books
of the Library of St. Victor.
After that Pantagruel had studied very well at Orleans,
he resolved to see the great University at Paris;
but, before his departure, he was informed that there
was a huge big bell at St.
Anian in the said town of
Orleans, under the ground, which had been there above
two hundred and fourteen years, for it was so great
that they could not by any device get it so much as
above the ground, although they used all the means
that are found in Vitruvius de Architectura, Albertus
de Re Aedificatoria, Euclid, Theon, Archimedes, and
Hero de Ingeniis; for all that was to no purpose.
Wherefore, condescending heartily to the humble request
of the citizens and inhabitants of the said town,
he determined to remove it to the tower that was erected
for it. With that he came to the place where
it was, and lifted it out of the ground with his little
finger as easily as you would have done a hawk’s
bell or bellwether’s tingle-tangle; but, before
he would carry it to the foresaid tower or steeple
appointed for it, he would needs make some music with
it about the town, and ring it alongst all the streets
as he carried it in his hand, wherewith all the people
were very glad. But there happened one great
inconveniency, for with carrying it so, and ringing
it about the streets, all the good Orleans wine turned
instantly, waxed flat and was spoiled, which nobody
there did perceive till the night following; for every
man found himself so altered and a-dry with drinking
these flat wines, that they did nothing but spit, and
that as white as Malta cotton, saying, We have of
the Pantagruel, and our very throats are salted.
This done, he came to Paris with his retinue.
And at his entry everyone came out to see him—as
you know well enough that the people of Paris is sottish
by nature, by B flat and B sharp—and beheld
him with great astonishment, mixed with no less fear
that he would carry away the palace into some other
country, a remotis, and far from them, as his father
formerly had done the great peal of bells at Our Lady’s
Church to tie about his mare’s neck. Now
after he had stayed there a pretty space, and studied
very well in all the seven liberal arts, he said it
was a good town to live in, but not to die; for that
the grave-digging rogues of St. Innocent used in frosty
nights to warm their bums with dead men’s bones.
In his abode there he found the library of St. Victor
a very stately and magnific one, especially in some
books which were there, of which followeth the Repertory
and Catalogue, Et primo,
Copyrights
Gargantua and Pantagruel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
