Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1Rabelais, François
General
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 1
Rabelais, François
Fantasy fiction, French -- Translations into English; Gargantua (Legendary character) -- Fiction; Giants -- Fiction
Diavolo, is there no more must? No more sweet wine? Germinavit radix
Jesse. Je renie ma vie, je meurs de soif; I renounce my life, I rage for
thirst. This wine is none of the worst. What wine drink you at Paris? I
give myself to the devil, if I did not once keep open house at Paris for
all comers six months together. Do you know Friar Claude of the high
kilderkins? Oh the good fellow that he is! But I do not know what fly
hath stung him of late, he is become so hard a student. For my part, I
study not at all. In our abbey we never study for fear of the mumps, which
disease in horses is called the mourning in the chine. Our late abbot was
wont to say that it is a monstrous thing to see a learned monk. By G--,
master, my friend, Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes.
You never saw so many hares as there are this year. I could not anywhere
come by a goshawk nor tassel of falcon. My Lord Belloniere promised me a
lanner, but he wrote to me not long ago that he was become pursy. The
partridges will so multiply henceforth, that they will go near to eat up
our ears. I take no delight in the stalking-horse, for I catch such cold
that I am like to founder myself at that sport. If I do not run, toil,
travel, and trot about, I am not well at ease. True it is that in leaping
over the hedges and bushes my frock leaves always some of its wool behind
it. I have recovered a dainty greyhound; I give him to the devil, if he
suffer a hare to escape him. A groom was leading him to my Lord
Huntlittle, and I robbed him of him. Did I ill? No, Friar John, said
Gymnast, no, by all the devils that are, no! So, said the monk, do I
attest these same devils so long as they last, or rather, virtue (of) G--,
what could that gouty limpard have done with so fine a dog? By the body of
G--, he is better pleased when one presents him with a good yoke of oxen.
How now, said Ponocrates, you swear, Friar John. It is only, said the
monk, but to grace and adorn my speech. They are colours of a Ciceronian
rhetoric.
Chapter 1.XL.
Why monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore some have bigger
noses than others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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