a fig for’t, let’s drink.  But pray what countrymen are you?  Touraine is our country, answered Panurge.  Cod so, cried Aedituus, you were not then hatched of an ill bird, I will say that for you, since the blessed Touraine is your mother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of good things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to touch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine’s income will not afford him to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between Moses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal to these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it, cram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing our puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat capons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl.  Come, box it about; tope on, my friends.  Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are perched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the income that Touraine yields us!  And in faith they sing rarely for their good founders, that is the truth on’t.  You never saw any Arcadian birds mumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt batons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their cages.  Drink on, sirs, whip it away.  Verily, friends, ’tis very fine drinking to-day, and so ‘tis every day o’ the week; then drink on, toss it about, here’s to you with all my soul.  You are most heartily welcome; never spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and belly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth of iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were to continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt.  Let us then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the creature.

Woons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on’t in this world!  Psha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t’other; the Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot.  Come, in the meantime let us drink here; come, here’s to thee, old fuddlecap.

Your first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together—­I mean, a paradise in this life, and another in the next.  Sure you were born wrapt in your mother’s smickets!  O happy creatures!  O more than men!  Would I had the luck to fare like you! (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter vi.)

Chapter 5.VII.

How Panurge related to Master Aedituus the fable of the horse and the ass.