revenues, but that they may work for their livelihood
by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches.
Nay truly, answered Panurge, Friar John, my left
ballock, I will believe thee, for thou dealest plain
with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,
without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances
and unnecessary reservations. Thou with the
splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated all the
lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions
which did intimidate and terrify me; therefore the
heavens be pleased to grant to thee at all she-conflicts
a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou
hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,—in
that point there shall be no failing, I promise thee,—and
shall have always by me pretty girls clothed with
the name of my wife’s waiting-maids, that, lying
under thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of
their sisterhood.
Let this serve for the first part of the sermon.
Hearken, quoth Friar John, to the oracle of the bells
of Varenes. What say they? I hear and
understand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by
my thirst, more uprightly fatidical than that of Jove’s
great kettles in Dodona. Hearken! Take
thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry;
for if thou marry, thou shalt find good therein, herein,
here in a wife thou shalt find good; so marry, marry.
I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the
elements invite and prompt me to it. Let this
word be to thee a brazen wall, by diffidence not to
be broken through. As for the second part of
this our doctrine,—thou seemest in some
measure to mistrust the readiness of my paternity
in the practising of my placket-racket within the
Aphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if
the stiff god of gardens were not favourable to me.
I pray thee, favour me so much as to believe that
I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments,
docile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things
and everywhere, and never stubborn or refractory to
my will or pleasure. I need no more but to let
go the reins, and slacken the leash, which is the belly-point,
and when the game is shown unto him, say, Hey, Jack,
to thy booty! he will not fail even then to flesh
himself upon his prey, and tuzzle it to some purpose.
Hereby you may perceive, although my future wife were
as unsatiable and gluttonous in her voluptuousness
and the delights of venery as ever was the Empress
Messalina, or yet the Marchioness (of Oincester) in
England, and I desire thee to give credit to it, that
I lack not for what is requisite to overlay the stomach
of her lust, but have wherewith aboundingly to please
her. I am not ignorant that Solomon said, who
indeed of that matter speaketh clerklike and learnedly,—as
also how Aristotle after him declared for a truth
that, for the greater part, the lechery of a woman
is ravenous and unsatisfiable. Nevertheless,
let such as are my friends who read those passages
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