Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2Rabelais, François
General
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2
Rabelais, François
Fantasy fiction, French -- Translations into English; Gargantua (Legendary character) -- Fiction; Giants -- Fiction
Going from Bourges, he came to Orleans, where he found store of swaggering
scholars that made him great entertainment at his coming, and with whom he
learned to play at tennis so well that he was a master at that game. For
the students of the said place make a prime exercise of it; and sometimes
they carried him unto Cupid's houses of commerce (in that city termed
islands, because of their being most ordinarily environed with other
houses, and not contiguous to any), there to recreate his person at the
sport of poussavant, which the wenches of London call the ferkers in and
in. As for breaking his head with over-much study, he had an especial care
not to do it in any case, for fear of spoiling his eyes. Which he the
rather observed, for that it was told him by one of his teachers, there
called regents, that the pain of the eyes was the most hurtful thing of any
to the sight. For this cause, when he one day was made a licentiate, or
graduate in law, one of the scholars of his acquaintance, who of learning
had not much more than his burden, though instead of that he could dance
very well and play at tennis, made the blazon and device of the licentiates
in the said university, saying,
So you have in your hand a racket,
A tennis-ball in your cod-placket,
A Pandect law in your cap's tippet,
And that you have the skill to trip it
In a low dance, you will b' allowed
The grant of the licentiate's hood.
Chapter 2.VI.
How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the
French language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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