The devil, you must know, came to the poor man’s door, and rapping there, cried, So ho! ho, the house! ho, clodpate! where art thou? Come out with a vengeance; come out with a wannion; come out and be damned; now for clawing. Then briskly and resolutely entering the house, and not finding the countryman there, he spied his wife lying on the ground, piteously weeping and howling. What is the matter? asked the devil. Where is he? what does he? Oh! that I knew where he is, replied threescore and five; the wicked rogue, the butcherly dog, the murderer! He has spoiled me; I am undone; I die of what he has done me. How, cried the devil, what is it? I’ll tickle him off for you by-and-by. Alas! cried the old dissembler, he told me, the butcher, the tyrant, the tearer of devils told me that he had made a match to scratch with you this day, and to try his claws he did but just touch me with his little finger here betwixt the legs, and has spoiled me for ever. Oh! I am a dead woman; I shall never be myself again; do but see! Nay, and besides, he talked of going to the smith’s to have his pounces sharpened and pointed. Alas! you are undone, Mr. Devil; good sir, scamper quickly, I am sure he won’t stay; save yourself, I beseech you. While she said this she uncovered herself up to the chin, after the manner in which the Persian women met their children who fled from the fight, and plainly showed her what do ye call them. The frightened devil, seeing the enormous solution of the continuity in all its dimensions, blessed himself, and cried out, Mahon, Demiourgon, Megaera, Alecto, Persephone! ‘slife, catch me here when he comes! I am gone! ‘sdeath, what a gash! I resign him the field.
Having heard the catastrophe of the story, we retired a-shipboard, not being willing to stay there any longer. Pantagruel gave to the poor’s box of the fabric of the church eighteen thousand good royals, in commiseration of the poverty of the people and the calamity of the place.
Chapter 48
How Pantagruel went ashore at the island of Papimany.
Having left the desolate island of the Pope-figs, we sailed for the space of a day very fairly and merrily, and made the blessed island of Papimany. As soon as we had dropt anchor in the road, before we had well moored our ship with ground-tackle, four persons in different garbs rowed towards us in a skiff. One of them was dressed like a monk in his frock, draggle-tailed, and booted; the other like a falconer, with a lure, and a long-winged hawk on his fist; the third like a solicitor, with a large bag, full of informations, subpoenas, breviates, bills, writs, cases, and other implements of pettifogging; the fourth looked like one of your vine-barbers about Ocleans, with a jaunty pair of canvas trousers, a dosser, and a pruning knife at his girdle.
As soon as the boat had clapped them on board, they all with one voice asked, Have you seen him, good passengers, have you seen him? Who? asked Pantagruel. You know who, answered they. Who is it? asked Friar John. ‘Sblood and ‘ounds, I’ll thrash him thick and threefold. This he said thinking that they inquired after some robber, murderer, or church-breaker. Oh, wonderful! cried the four; do not you foreign people know the one? Sirs, replied Epistemon, we do not understand those terms; but if you will be pleased to let us know who you mean, we will tell you the truth of the matter without any more ado. We mean, said they, he that is. Did you ever see him? He that is, returned Pantagruel, according to our theological doctrine, is God, who said to Moses, I am that I am. We never saw him, nor can he be beheld by mortal eyes. We mean nothing less than that supreme God who rules in heaven, replied they; we mean the god on earth. Did you ever see him? Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope. Ay, ay, answered Panurge; yea, verily, gentlemen, I have seen three of them, whose sight has not much bettered me. How! cried they, our sacred decretals inform us that there never is more than one living. I mean successively, one after the other, returned Panurge; otherwise I never saw more than one at a time.
O thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more than double welcome! They then kneeled down before us and would have kissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the pope come thither in his own person, ’tis all they could do to him. No, certainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter. We would kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders; for he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by our fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope. So that, according to our subtle decretaline philosophy, this is a necessary consequence: he is pope; therefore he has genitories, and should genitories no more be found in the world, the world could no more have a pope.
While they were talking thus, Pantagruel inquired of one of the coxswain’s crew who those persons were. He answered that they were the four estates of the island, and added that we should be made as welcome as princes, since we had seen the pope. Panurge having been acquainted with this by Pantagruel, said to him in his ear, I swear and vow, sir, ’tis even so; he that has patience may compass anything. Seeing the pope had done us no good; now, in the devil’s name, ’twill do us a great deal. We then went ashore, and the whole country, men, women, and children, came to meet us as in a solemn procession. Our four estates cried out to them with a loud voice, They have seen him! they have seen him! they have seen him! That proclamation being made, all the mob kneeled before us, lifting up their hands towards heaven, and crying, O happy men! O most happy! and this acclamation lasted above a quarter of an hour.
Then came the Busby (!) of the place, with all his pedagogues, ushers, and schoolboys, whom he magisterially flogged, as they used to whip children in our country formerly when some criminal was hanged, that they might remember it. This displeased Pantagruel, who said to them, Gentlemen, if you do not leave off whipping these poor children, I am gone. The people were amazed, hearing his stentorian voice; and I saw a little hump with long fingers say to the hypodidascal, What, in the name of wonder! do all those that see the pope grow as tall as yon huge fellow that threatens us? Ah! how I shall think time long till I have seen him too, that I may grow and look as big. In short, the acclamations were so great that Homenas (so they called their bishop) hastened thither on an unbridled mule with green trappings, attended by his apposts (as they said) and his supposts, or officers bearing crosses, banners, standards, canopies, torches, holy-water pots, &c. He too wanted to kiss our feet (as the good Christian Valfinier did to Pope Clement), saying that one of their hypothetes, that’s one of the scavengers, scourers, and commentators of their holy decretals, had written that, in the same manner as the Messiah, so long and so much expected by the Jews, at last appeared among them; so, on some happy day of God, the pope would come into that island; and that, while they waited for that blessed time, if any who had seen him at Rome or elsewhere chanced to come among them, they should be sure to make much of them, feast them plentifully, and treat them with a great deal of reverence. However, we civilly desired to be excused.
Chapter 49
How Homenas, Bishop of Papimany, showed us the Uranopet decretals.
Homenas then said to us: ’Tis enjoined us by our holy decretals to visit churches first and taverns after. Therefore, not to decline that fine institution, let us go to church; we will afterwards go and feast ourselves. Man of God, quoth Friar John, do you go before, we’ll follow you. You spoke in the matter properly, and like a good Christian; ’tis long since we saw any such. For my part, this rejoices my mind very much, and I verily believe that I shall have the better stomach after it. Well, ’tis a happy thing to meet with good men! Being come near the gate of the church, we spied a huge thick book, gilt, and covered all over with precious stones, as rubies, emeralds, (diamonds,) and pearls, more, or at least as valuable as those which Augustus consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus. This book hanged in the air, being fastened with two thick chains of gold to the zoophore of the porch. We looked on it and admired it. As for Pantagruel, he handled it and dandled it and turned it as he pleased, for he could reach it without straining; and he protested that whenever he touched it, he was seized with a pleasant tickling at his fingers’ end, new life and activity in his arms, and a violent temptation in his mind to beat one or two sergeants, or such officers, provided they were not of the shaveling kind. Homenas then said to us, The law was formerly given to the Jews by Moses, written by God himself. At Delphos, before the portal of Apollo’s temple, this sentence, (Greek), was found written with a divine hand. And some time after it, EI was also seen, and as divinely written and transmitted from heaven. Cybele’s image was brought out of heaven, into a field called Pessinunt, in Phrygia; so was that of Diana to Tauris, if you will believe Euripides; the oriflamme, or holy standard, was transmitted out of heaven to the noble and most Christian kings of France, to fight against the unbelievers. In the reign of Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans, the famous copper buckler called Ancile was seen to descend from heaven. At Acropolis, near Athens, Minerva’s statue formerly fell from the empyreal heaven. In like manner the sacred decretals which you see were written with the hand of an angel of the cherubim kind. You outlandish people will hardly believe this, I fear. Little enough, of conscience, said Panurge. And then, continued Homenas, they were miraculously transmitted to us here from the very heaven of heavens; in the same manner as the river Nile is called Diipetes by Homer, the father of all philosophy — the holy decretals always excepted. Now, because you have seen the pope, their evangelist and everlasting protector, we will give you leave to see and kiss them on the inside, if you think meet. But then you must fast three days before, and canonically confess; nicely and strictly mustering up and inventorizing your sins, great and small, so thick that one single circumstance of them may not escape you; as our holy decretals, which you see, direct. This will take up some time. Man of God, answered Panurge, we have seen and descried decrees, and eke decretals enough o’ conscience; some on paper, other on parchment, fine and gay like any painted paper lantern, some on vellum, some in manuscript, and others in print; so you need not take half these pains to show us these. We’ll take the goodwill for the deed, and thank you as much as if we had. Ay, marry, said Homenas, but you never saw these that are angelically written. Those in your country are only transcripts from ours; as we find it written by one of our old decretaline scholiasts. For me, do not spare me; I do not value the labour, so I may serve you. Do but tell me whether you will be confessed and fast only three short little days of God? As for shriving, answered Panurge, there can be no great harm in’t; but this same fasting, master of mine, will hardly down with us at this time, for we have so very much overfasted ourselves at sea that the spiders have spun their cobwebs over our grinders. Do but look on this good Friar John des Entomeures (Homenas then courteously demi-clipped him about the neck), some moss is growing in his throat for want of bestirring and exercising his chaps. He speaks the truth, vouched Friar John; I have so much fasted that I’m almost grown hump-shouldered. Come, then, let’s go into the church, said Homenas; and pray forgive us if for the present we do not sing you a fine high mass. The hour of midday is past, and after it our sacred decretals forbid us to sing mass, I mean your high and lawful mass. But I’ll say a low and dry one for you. I had rather have one moistened with some good Anjou wine, cried Panurge; fall to, fall to your low mass, and despatch. Ods-bodikins, quoth Friar John, it frets me to the guts that I must have an empty stomach at this time of day; for, had I eaten a good breakfast and fed like a monk, if he should chance to sing us the Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, I had then brought thither bread and wine for the traits passes (those that are gone before). Well, patience; pull away, and save tide; short and sweet, I pray you, and this for a cause.