behold, and said to his company no more but this:
Je trouve beau ce (I find this pretty); whereupon
that country hath been ever since that time called
Beauce. But all the breakfast the mare got that
day was but a little yawning and gaping, in memory
whereof the gentlemen of Beauce do as yet to this
day break their fast with gaping, which they find to
be very good, and do spit the better for it.
At last they came to Paris, where Gargantua refreshed
himself two or three days, making very merry with his
folks, and inquiring what men of learning there were
then in the city, and what wine they drunk there.
Chapter 1.XVII.
How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians, and
how he took away the great bells of Our Lady’s
Church.
Some few days after that they had refreshed themselves,
he went to see the city, and was beheld of everybody
there with great admiration; for the people of Paris
are so sottish, so badot, so foolish and fond by nature,
that a juggler, a carrier of indulgences, a sumpter-horse,
or mule with cymbals or tinkling bells, a blind fiddler
in the middle of a cross lane, shall draw a greater
confluence of people together than an evangelical
preacher. And they pressed so hard upon him that
he was constrained to rest himself upon the towers
of Our Lady’s Church. At which place, seeing
so many about him, he said with a loud voice, I believe
that these buzzards will have me to pay them here
my welcome hither, and my Proficiat. It is but
good reason. I will now give them their wine,
but it shall be only in sport. Then smiling,
he untied his fair braguette, and drawing out his
mentul into the open air, he so bitterly all-to-bepissed
them, that he drowned two hundred and sixty thousand,
four hundred and eighteen, besides the women and little
children. Some, nevertheless, of the company
escaped this piss-flood by mere speed of foot, who,
when they were at the higher end of the university,
sweating, coughing, spitting, and out of breath, they
began to swear and curse, some in good hot earnest,
and others in jest. Carimari, carimara:
golynoly, golynolo. By my sweet Sanctess, we
are washed in sport, a sport truly to laugh at;—in
French, Par ris, for which that city hath been ever
since called Paris; whose name formerly was Leucotia,
as Strabo testifieth, lib.
quarto, from the Greek word
leukotes, whiteness,—because of the white
thighs of the ladies of that place. And forasmuch
as, at this imposition of a new name, all the people
that were there swore everyone by the Sancts of his
parish, the Parisians, which are patched up of all
nations and all pieces of countries, are by nature
both good jurors and good jurists, and somewhat overweening;
whereupon Joanninus de Barrauco, libro de copiositate
reverentiarum, thinks that they are called Parisians
from the Greek word parresia, which signifies boldness
and liberty in speech. This done, he considered
