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
of good wine, a good bed, my back to the fire, my belly to the table, and a
good deep dish. Hei, Domine, I beseech you, in nomine Patris, Filii, et
Spiritus sancti, Amen, to restore unto us our bells: and God keep you from
evil, and our Lady from health, qui vivit et regnat per omnia secula
seculorum, Amen. Hem, hashchehhawksash, qzrchremhemhash.
Verum enim vero, quandoquidem, dubio procul. Edepol, quoniam, ita certe,
medius fidius; a town without bells is like a blind man without a staff, an
ass without a crupper, and a cow without cymbals. Therefore be assured,
until you have restored them unto us, we will never leave crying after you,
like a blind man that hath lost his staff, braying like an ass without a
crupper, and making a noise like a cow without cymbals. A certain
latinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the
authority of one Taponnus,--I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet,
--who wished those bells had been made of feathers, and the clapper of a
foxtail, to the end they might have begot a chronicle in the bowels of his
brain, when he was about the composing of his carminiformal lines. But nac
petetin petetac, tic, torche lorgne, or rot kipipur kipipot put pantse
malf, he was declared an heretic. We make them as of wax. And no more
saith the deponent. Valete et plaudite. Calepinus recensui.
Chapter 1.XX.
How the Sophister carried away his cloth, and how he had a suit in law
against the other masters.
The sophister had no sooner ended, but Ponocrates and Eudemon burst out in
a laughing so heartily, that they had almost split with it, and given up
the ghost, in rendering their souls to God: even just as Crassus did,
seeing a lubberly ass eat thistles; and as Philemon, who, for seeing an ass
eat those figs which were provided for his own dinner, died with force of
laughing. Together with them Master Janotus fell a-laughing too as fast as
he could, in which mood of laughing they continued so long, that their eyes
did water by the vehement concussion of the substance of the brain, by
which these lachrymal humidities, being pressed out, glided through the
optic nerves, and so to the full represented Democritus Heraclitizing and
Heraclitus Democritizing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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