willing—­I’ll set off and graff some in my garden in Touraine, by the banks of the Loire, and will call them bon-Christian or good-Christian pears, for I never saw better Christians than are these good Papimans.  I would like him two to one better yet, said Friar John, would he but give us two or three cartloads of yon buxom lasses.  Why, what would you do with them? cried Homenas.  Quoth Friar John, No harm, only bleed the kind-hearted souls straight between the two great toes with certain clever lancets of the right stamp; by which operation good Christian children would be inoculated upon them, and the breed be multiplied in our country, in which there are not many over-good, the more’s the pity.

Nay, verily, replied Homenas, we cannot do this; for you would make them tread their shoes awry, crack their pipkins, and spoil their shapes.  You love mutton, I see; you will run at sheep.  I know you by that same nose and hair of yours, though I never saw your face before.  Alas! alas! how kind you are!  And would you indeed damn your precious soul?  Our decretals forbid this.  Ah, I wish you had them at your finger’s-end.  Patience, said Friar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus.  Matter of breviary.  As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears a head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline doctor.

Dinner being over, we took our leave of the right reverend Homenas, and of all the good people, humbly giving thanks; and, to make them amends for their kind entertainment, promised them that, at our coming to Rome, we would make our applications so effectually to the pope that he would speedily be sure to come to visit them in person.  After this we went o’board.

Pantagruel, by an act of generosity, and as an acknowledgment of the sight of the pope’s picture, gave Homenas nine pieces of double friezed cloth of gold to be set before the grates of the window.  He also caused the church box for its repairs and fabric to be quite filled with double crowns of gold; and ordered nine hundred and fourteen angels to be delivered to each of the lasses who had waited at table, to buy them husbands when they could get them.

Chapter 4.LV.

How Pantagruel, being at sea, heard various unfrozen words.

When we were at sea, junketting, tippling, discoursing, and telling stories, Pantagruel rose and stood up to look out; then asked us, Do you hear nothing, gentlemen?  Methinks I hear some people talking in the air, yet I can see nobody.  Hark!  According to his command we listened, and with full ears sucked in the air as some of you suck oysters, to find if we could hear some sound scattered through the sky; and to lose none of it, like the Emperor Antoninus some of us laid their hands hollow next to their ears; but all this would not do, nor could we hear any voice.  Yet Pantagruel continued to assure us he heard various voices in the air, some of men, and some of women.