Suddenly Epistemon began to breathe, then opened his eyes, yawned, sneezed, and afterwards let a great household fart. Whereupon Panurge said, Now, certainly, he is healed,--and therefore gave him to drink a large full glass of strong white wine, with a sugared toast. In this fashion was Epistemon finely healed, only that he was somewhat hoarse for above three weeks together, and had a dry cough of which he could not be rid but by the force of continual drinking. And now he began to speak, and said that he had seen the devil, had spoken with Lucifer familiarly, and had been very merry in hell and in the Elysian fields, affirming very seriously before them all that the devils were boon companions and merry fellows. But, in respect of the damned, he said he was very sorry that Panurge had so soon called him back into this world again; for, said he, I took wonderful delight to see them. How so? said Pantagruel. Because they do not use them there, said Epistemon, so badly as you think they do. Their estate and condition of living is but only changed after a very strange manner; for I saw Alexander the Great there amending and patching on clouts upon old breeches and stockings, whereby he got but a very poor living. Xerxes was a crier of mustard. Romulus, a salter and patcher of pattens. Numa, a nailsmith. Tarquin, a porter. Piso, a clownish swain. Sylla, a ferryman. Cyrus, a cowherd. Themistocles, a glass-maker. Epaminondas, a maker of mirrors or looking-glasses. Brutus and Cassius, surveyors or measurers of land. Demosthenes, a vine-dresser. Cicero, a fire-kindler. Fabius, a threader of beads. Artaxerxes, a rope-maker. Aeneas, a miller. Achilles was a scaldpated maker of hay-bundles. Agamemnon, a lick-box. Ulysses, a hay-mower. Nestor, a door-keeper or forester. Darius, a gold-finder or jakes-farmer. Ancus Martius, a ship-trimmer. Camillus, a foot-post. Marcellus, a sheller of beans. Drusus, a taker of money at the doors of playhouses. Scipio Africanus, a crier of lee in a wooden slipper. Asdrubal, a lantern-maker. Hannibal, a kettlemaker and seller of eggshells. Priamus, a seller of old clouts. Lancelot of the Lake was a flayer of dead horses. All the Knights of the Round Table were poor day-labourers, employed to row over the rivers of Cocytus, Phlegeton, Styx, Acheron, and Lethe, when my lords the devils had a mind to recreate themselves upon the water, as in the like occasion are hired the boatmen at Lyons, the gondoliers of Venice, and oars at London. But with this difference, that these poor knights have only for their fare a bob or flirt on the nose, and in the evening a morsel of coarse mouldy bread. Trajan was a fisher of frogs. Antoninus, a lackey. Commodus, a jet-maker. Pertinax, a peeler of walnuts. Lucullus, a maker of rattles and hawks'-bells. Justinian, a pedlar. Hector, a snap-sauce scullion. Paris was a poor beggar. Cambyses, a mule-driver.