Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3Rabelais, François
General
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 3
Rabelais, François
Fantasy fiction, French -- Translations into English; Gargantua (Legendary character) -- Fiction; Giants -- Fiction
Chapter 3.XXVII.
How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.
By Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear
friend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place. Only have
a special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of
the double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so
strongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean
thwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul. For if there pass long intervals
betwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too
large a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist
from giving suck to children--they lose their milk; and if continually thou
do not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy
lacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to
piss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar's
scrip. This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it;
for myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do
what they would, because before they did not what they might have done: Ex
desuetudine amittuntur privilegia. Non-usage oftentimes destroys one's
right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain
as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic
people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal
labouring. Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen,
idly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their
livelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches. Nay truly,
answered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for
thou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,
without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary
reservations. Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated
all the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did
intimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to
thee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou
hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,--in that point there
shall be no failing, I promise thee,--and shall have always by me pretty
girls clothed with the name of my wife's waiting-maids, that, lying under
thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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