We shall have sport enough with it; but I foresee one inconveniency; for methinks we have but little store of thunder ammunition since the time that you, my fellow gods, for your pastime lavished them away to bombard new Antioch, by my particular permission; as since, after your example, the stout champions who had undertaken to hold the fortress of Dindenarois against all comers fairly wasted their powder with shooting at sparrows, and then, not having wherewith to defend themselves in time of need, valiantly surrendered to the enemy, who were already packing up their awls, full of madness and despair, and thought on nothing but a shameful retreat.  Take care this be remedied, son Vulcan; rouse up your drowsy Cyclopes, Asteropes, Brontes, Arges, Polyphemus, Steropes, Pyracmon, and so forth, set them at work, and make them drink as they ought.

Never spare liquor to such as are at hot work.  Now let us despatch this bawling fellow below.  You, Mercury, go see who it is, and know what he wants.  Mercury looked out at heaven’s trapdoor, through which, as I am told, they hear what is said here below.  By the way, one might well enough mistake it for the scuttle of a ship; though Icaromenippus said it was like the mouth of a well.  The light-heeled deity saw that it was honest Tom, who asked for his lost hatchet; and accordingly he made his report to the synod.  Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets.  Well, he must have it then for all this, for so ’tis written in the Book of Fate (do you hear?), as well as if it was worth the whole duchy of Milan.  The truth is, the fellow’s hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king.  Come, come, let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again.

Now, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and mole-catchers of Landerousse.  Whereabouts were we?  Priapus was standing in the chimney-corner, and having heard what Mercury had reported, said in a most courteous and jovial manner:  King Jupiter, while by your order and particular favour I was garden-keeper-general on earth, I observed that this word hatchet is equivocal to many things; for it signifies a certain instrument by the means of which men fell and cleave timber.  It also signifies (at least I am sure it did formerly) a female soundly and frequently thumpthumpriggletickletwiddletobyed.  Thus I perceived that every cock of the game used to call his doxy his hatchet; for with that same tool (this he said lugging out and exhibiting his nine-inch knocker) they so strongly and resolutely shove and drive in their helves, that the females remain free from a fear epidemical amongst their sex, viz., that from the bottom of the male’s belly the instrument should dangle at his heel for want of such feminine props.  And I remember, for I have a member, and a memory too, ay, and a fine memory, large enough to fill a butter-firkin; I remember, I say, that one day of tubilustre (horn-fair) at the festivals of goodman Vulcan in May, I heard Josquin Des Prez, Olkegan, Hobrecht, Agricola, Brumel, Camelin, Vigoris, De la Fage, Bruyer, Prioris, Seguin, De la Rue, Midy, Moulu, Mouton, Gascogne, Loyset, Compere, Penet, Fevin, Rousee, Richard Fort, Rousseau, Consilion, Constantio Festi, Jacquet Bercan, melodiously singing the following catch on a pleasant green: