I’ll give you another example of Edward V., King of England. Master Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king, being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool. Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health your highness is! How carefully your learned doctor, Thomas Linacre, looks after you! He saw that now you grow old you are inclined to be somewhat costive, and every day were fain to have an apothecary, I mean a suppository or clyster, thrust into your royal nockandroe; so he has, much to the purpose, induced you to place here the arms of France; for the very sight of them puts you into such a dreadful fright that you immediately let fly as much as would come from eighteen squattering bonasi of Paeonia. And if they were painted in other parts of your house, by jingo, you would presently conskite yourself wherever you saw them. Nay, had you but here a picture of the great oriflamme of France, ods-bodikins, your tripes and bowels would be in no small danger of dropping out at the orifice of your posteriors. But henh, henh, atque iterum henh.
A cockney of short reach, I say, shallow of judgment and judging shallowly, to wonder that you should cause your points to be untrussed in your chamber before you come into this closet. By’r lady, at first I thought your close-stool had stood behind the hangings of your bed; otherwise it seemed very odd to me you should untruss so far from the place of evacuation. But now I find I was a gull, a wittol, a woodcock, a mere ninny, a dolt-head, a noddy, a changeling, a calf-lolly, a doddipoll. You do wisely, by the mass, you do wisely; for had you not been ready to clap your hind face on the mustard-pot as soon as you came within sight of these arms — mark ye me, cop’s body — the bottom of your breeches had supplied the office of a close-stool.
Friar John, stopping the handle of his face with his left hand, did, with the forefinger of the right, point out Panurge’s shirt to Pantagruel, who, seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring, berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil take Tybert! I feel it has all bepinked my poor hide, and drawn on it to the life I don’t know how many lobsters’ whiskers. With this he threw his boar-cat down.
Go, go, said Pantagruel, be bathed and cleaned, calm your fears, put on a clean shift, and then your clothes. What! do you think I am afraid? cried Panurge. Not I, I protest. By the testicles of Hercules, I am more hearty, bold, and stout, though I say it that should not, than if I had swallowed as many flies as are put into plumcakes and other paste at Paris from Midsummer to Christmas. But what’s this? Hah! oh, ho! how the devil came I by this? Do you call this what the cat left in the malt, filth, dirt, dung, dejection, faecal matter, excrement, stercoration, sir-reverence, ordure, second-hand meats, fumets, stronts, scybal, or spyrathe? ’Tis Hibernian saffron, I protest. Hah, hah, hah! ’tis Irish saffron, by Shaint Pautrick, and so much for this time. Selah. Let’s drink.
End of Book IV
THE FIFTH BOOK
The Author’s Prologue.
Indefatigable topers, and you, thrice precious martyrs of the smock, give me leave to put a serious question to your worships while you are idly striking your codpieces, and I myself not much better employed. Pray, why is it that people say that men are not such sots nowadays as they were in the days of yore? Sot is an old word that signifies a dunce, dullard, jolthead, gull, wittol, or noddy, one without guts in his brains, whose cockloft is unfurnished, and, in short, a fool. Now would I know whether you would have us understand by this same saying, as indeed you logically may, that formerly men were fools and in this generation are grown wise? How many and what dispositions made them fools? How many and what dispositions were wanting to make ‘em wise? Why were they fools? How should they be wise? Pray, how came you to know that men were formerly fools? How did you find that they are now wise? Who the devil made ‘em fools? Who a God’s name made ‘em wise? Who d’ye think are most, those that loved mankind foolish, or those that love it wise? How long has it been wise? How long otherwise? Whence proceeded the foregoing folly? Whence the following wisdom? Why did the old folly end now, and no later? Who did the modern wisdom begin now, and no sooner? What were we the worse for the former folly? What the better for the succeeding wisdom? How should the ancient folly be come to nothing? How should this same new wisdom be started up and established?
Now answer me, an’t please you. I dare not adjure you in stronger terms, reverend sirs, lest I make your pious fatherly worships in the least uneasy. Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil. Be cheery, my lads; and if you are for me, take me off three or five bumpers of the best, while I make a halt at the first part of the sermon; then answer my question. If you are not for me, avaunt! avoid, Satan! For I swear by my great-grandmother’s placket (and that’s a horrid oath), that if you don’t help me to solve that puzzling problem, I will, nay, I already do repent having proposed it; for still I must remain nettled and gravelled, and a devil a bit I know how to get off. Well, what say you? I’faith, I begin to smell you out. You are not yet disposed to give me an answer; nor I neither, by these whiskers. Yet to give some light into the business, I’ll e’en tell you what had been anciently foretold in the matter by a venerable doctor, who, being moved by the spirit in a prophetic vein, wrote a book ycleped the Prelatical Bagpipe. What d’ye think the old fornicator saith? Hearken, you old noddies, hearken now or never.