those doubts which I have proposed. And, as
for disputing contentiously, I will not do it, for
it is too base a thing, and therefore leave it to those
sottish sophisters who in their disputes do not search
for the truth, but for contradiction only and debate.
Then said Panurge, If I, who am but a mean and inconsiderable
disciple of my master my lord Pantagruel, content and
satisfy you in all and everything, it were a thing
below my said master wherewith to trouble him.
Therefore is it fitter that he be chairman, and sit
as a judge and moderator of our discourse and purpose,
and give you satisfaction in many things wherein perhaps
I shall be wanting to your expectation. Truly,
said Thaumast, it is very well said; begin then.
Now you must note that Panurge had set at the end
of his long codpiece a pretty tuft of red silk, as
also of white, green, and blue, and within it had put
a fair orange.
How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued
by signs.
Everybody then taking heed, and hearkening with great
silence, the Englishman lift up on high into the air
his two hands severally, clunching in all the tops
of his fingers together, after the manner which, a
la Chinonnese, they call the hen’s arse, and
struck the one hand on the other by the nails four
several times. Then he, opening them, struck
the one with the flat of the other till it yielded
a clashing noise, and that only once. Again,
in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards
four times in opening them. Then did he lay them
joined, and extended the one towards the other, as
if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers unto
God. Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his
right hand, and put the thumb thereof into the nostril
of the same side, holding his four fingers straight
out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point
of his nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making
the other wink with a profound depression of the eyebrows
and eyelids. Then lifted he up his left hand,
with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers
and elevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly
correspondent to the situation of his right hand,
with the distance of a cubit and a half between them.
This done, in the same form he abased towards the
ground about the one and the other hand. Lastly,
he held them in the midst, as aiming right at the
Englishman’s nose. And if Mercury,—said
the Englishman. There Panurge interrupted him,
and said, You have spoken, Mask.
Then made the Englishman this sign. His left
hand all open he lifted up into the air, then instantly
shut into his fist the four fingers thereof, and his
thumb extended at length he placed upon the gristle
of his nose. Presently after, he lifted up his
right hand all open, and all open abased and bent
it downwards, putting the thumb thereof in the very
place where the little finger of the left hand did
close in the fist, and the four right-hand fingers
he softly moved in the air. Then contrarily he
did with the right hand what he had done with the
left, and with the left what he had done with the
right.
