Chapter 3.XXIX.—How Pantagruel convocated together a theologian, physician, lawyer, and philosopher, for extricating Panurge out of the perplexity wherein he was.
No sooner were they come into the royal palace, but they to the full made report unto Pantagruel of the success of their expedition, and showed him the response of Raminagrobis. When Pantagruel had read it over and over again, the oftener he perused it being the better pleased therewith, he said, in addressing his speech to Panurge, I have not as yet seen any answer framed to your demand which affordeth me more contentment. For in this his succinct copy of verses, he summarily and briefly, yet fully enough expresseth how he would have us to understand that everyone in the project and enterprise of marriage ought to be his own carver, sole arbitrator of his proper thoughts, and from himself alone take counsel in the main and peremptory closure of what his determination should be, in either his assent to or dissent from it. Such always hath been my opinion to you, and when at first you spoke thereof to me I truly told you this same very thing; but tacitly you scorned my advice, and would not harbour it within your mind. I know for certain, and therefore may I with the greater confidence utter my conception of it, that philauty, or self-love, is that which blinds your judgment and deceiveth you.
Let us do otherwise, and that is this: Whatever we are, or have, consisteth in three things—the soul, the body, and the goods. Now, for the preservation of these three, there are three sorts of learned men ordained, each respectively to have care of that one which is recommended to his charge. Theologues are appointed for the soul, physicians for the welfare of the body, and lawyers for the safety of our goods. Hence it is that it is my resolution to have on Sunday next with me at dinner a divine, a physician, and a lawyer, that with those three assembled thus together we may in every point and particle confer at large of your perplexity. By Saint Picot, answered Panurge, we never shall do any good that way, I see it already. And you see yourself how the world is vilely abused, as when with a foxtail one claps another’s breech to cajole him. We give our souls to keep to the theologues, who for the greater part are heretics. Our bodies we commit to the physicians, who never themselves take any physic. And then we entrust our goods to the lawyers, who never go to law against one another. You speak like a courtier, quoth Pantagruel. But the first point of your assertion is to be denied; for we daily see how good theologues make it their chief business, their whole and sole employment, by their deeds, their words, and writings, to extirpate errors and heresies out of the hearts of men, and in their stead profoundly plant the true and lively faith. The second point you spoke of I commend; for, whereas the professors of the art of medicine give so good order to the prophylactic, or conservative part of their faculty, in what concerneth their proper healths, that they stand in no need of making use of the other branch, which is the curative or therapeutic, by medicaments. As for the third, I grant it to be true, for learned advocates and counsellors at law are so much taken up with the affairs of others in their consultations, pleadings, and such-like patrocinations of those who are their clients, that they have no leisure to attend any controversies of their own. Therefore, on the next ensuing Sunday, let the divine be our godly Father Hippothadee, the physician our honest Master Rondibilis, and our legist our friend Bridlegoose. Nor will it be (to my thinking) amiss, that we enter into the Pythagoric field, and choose for an assistant to the three afore-named doctors our ancient faithful acquaintance, the philosopher Trouillogan; especially seeing a perfect philosopher, such as is Trouillogan, is able positively to resolve all whatsoever doubts you can propose. Carpalin, have you a care to have them here all four on Sunday next at dinner, without fail.
I believe, quoth Epistemon, that throughout the whole country, in all the corners thereof, you could not have pitched upon such other four. Which I speak not so much in regard of the most excellent qualifications and accomplishments wherewith all of them are endowed for the respective discharge and management of each his own vocation and calling (wherein without all doubt or controversy they are the paragons of the land, and surpass all others), as for that Rondibilis is married now, who before was not,—Hippothadee was not before, nor is yet,—Bridlegoose was married once, but is not now,—and Trouillogan is married now, who wedded was to another wife before. Sir, if it may stand with your good liking, I will ease Carpalin of some parcel of his labour, and invite Bridlegoose myself, with whom I of a long time have had a very intimate familiarity, and unto whom I am to speak on the behalf of a pretty hopeful youth who now studieth at Toulouse, under the most learned virtuous doctor Boissonet. Do what you deem most expedient, quoth Pantagruel, and tell me if my recommendation can in anything be steadable for the promoval of the good of that youth, or otherwise serve for bettering of the dignity and office of the worthy Boissonet, whom I do so love and respect for one of the ablest and most sufficient in his way that anywhere are extant. Sir, I will use therein my best endeavours, and heartily bestir myself about it.
Chapter 3.XXX.—How the theologue, Hippothadee, giveth counsel to Panurge in the matter and business of his nuptial enterprise.
The dinner on the subsequent Sunday was no sooner made ready than that the afore-named invited guests gave thereto their appearance, all of them, Bridlegoose only excepted, who was the deputy-governor of Fonsbeton. At the ushering in of the second service Panurge, making a low reverence, spake thus: Gentlemen, the question I am to propound unto you shall be uttered in very few words—Should I marry or no? If my doubt herein be not resolved by you, I shall hold it altogether insolvable, as are the Insolubilia de Aliaco; for all of you are elected, chosen, and culled out from amongst others, everyone in his own condition and quality, like so many picked peas on a carpet.
The Father Hippothadee, in obedience to the bidding of Pantagruel, and with much courtesy to the company, answered exceeding modestly after this manner: My friend, you are pleased to ask counsel of us; but first you must consult with yourself. Do you find any trouble or disquiet in your body by the importunate stings and pricklings of the flesh? That I do, quoth Panurge, in a hugely strong and almost irresistible measure. Be not offended, I beseech you, good father, at the freedom of my expression. No truly, friend, not I, quoth Hippothadee, there is no reason why I should be displeased therewith. But in this carnal strife and debate of yours have you obtained from God the gift and special grace of continency? In good faith, not, quoth Panurge. My counsel to you in that case, my friend, is that you marry, quoth Hippothadee; for you should rather choose to marry once than to burn still in fires of concupiscence. Then Panurge, with a jovial heart and a loud voice, cried out, That is spoke gallantly, without circumbilivaginating about and about, and never hitting it in its centred point. Gramercy, my good father! In truth I am resolved now to marry, and without fail I shall do it quickly. I invite you to my wedding. By the body of a hen, we shall make good cheer, and be as merry as crickets. You shall wear the bridegroom’s colours, and, if we eat a goose, my wife shall not roast it for me. I will entreat you to lead up the first dance of the bridesmaids, if it may please you to do me so much favour and honour. There resteth yet a small difficulty, a little scruple, yea, even less than nothing, whereof I humbly crave your resolution. Shall I be a cuckold, father, yea or no? By no means, answered Hippothadee, will you be cuckolded, if it please God. O the Lord help us now, quoth Panurge; whither are we driven to, good folks? To the conditionals, which, according to the rules and precepts of the dialectic faculty, admit of all contradictions and impossibilities. If my Transalpine mule had wings, my Transalpine mule would fly, if it please God, I shall not be a cuckold; but I shall be a cuckold, if it please him. Good God, if this were a condition which I knew how to prevent, my hopes should be as high as ever, nor would I despair. But you here send me to God’s privy council, to the closet of his little pleasures. You, my French countrymen, which is the way you take to go thither?
My honest father, I believe it will be your best not to come to my wedding. The clutter and dingle-dangle noise of marriage guests will but disturb you, and break the serious fancies of your brain. You love repose, with solitude and silence; I really believe you will not come. And then you dance but indifferently, and would be out of countenance at the first entry. I will send you some good things to your chamber, together with the bride’s favour, and there you may drink our health, if it may stand with your good liking. My friend, quoth Hippothadee, take my words in the sense wherein I meant them, and do not misinterpret me. When I tell you,—If it please God,—do I to you any wrong therein? Is it an ill expression? Is it a blaspheming clause or reserve any way scandalous unto the world? Do not we thereby honour the Lord God Almighty, Creator, Protector, and Conserver of all things? Is not that a mean whereby we do acknowledge him to be the sole giver of all whatsoever is good? Do not we in that manifest our faith that we believe all things to depend upon his infinite and incomprehensible bounty, and that without him nothing can be produced, nor after its production be of any value, force, or power, without the concurring aid and favour of his assisting grace? Is it not a canonical and authentic exception, worthy to be premised to all our undertakings? Is it not expedient that what we propose unto ourselves be still referred to what shall be disposed of by the sacred will of God, unto which all things must acquiesce in the heavens as well as on the earth? Is not that verily a sanctifying of his holy name? My friend, you shall not be a cuckold, if it please God, nor shall we need to despair of the knowledge of his good will and pleasure herein, as if it were such an abstruse and mysteriously hidden secret that for the clear understanding thereof it were necessary to consult with those of his celestial privy council, or expressly make a voyage unto the empyrean chamber where order is given for the effectuating of his most holy pleasures. The great God hath done us this good, that he hath declared and revealed them to us openly and plainly, and described them in the Holy Bible. There will you find that you shall never be a cuckold, that is to say, your wife shall never be a strumpet, if you make choice of one of a commendable extraction, descended of honest parents, and instructed in all piety and virtue—such a one as hath not at any time haunted or frequented the company or conversation of those that are of corrupt and depraved manners, one loving and fearing God, who taketh a singular delight in drawing near to him by faith and the cordial observing of his sacred commandments—and finally, one who, standing in awe of the Divine Majesty of the Most High, will be loth to offend him and lose the favourable kindness of his grace through any defect of faith or transgression against the ordinances of his holy law, wherein adultery is most rigorously forbidden and a close adherence to her husband alone most strictly and severely enjoined; yea, in such sort that she is to cherish, serve, and love him above anything, next to God, that meriteth to be beloved. In the interim, for the better schooling of her in these instructions, and that the wholesome doctrine of a matrimonial duty may take the deeper root in her mind, you must needs carry yourself so on your part, and your behaviour is to be such, that you are to go before her in a good example, by entertaining her unfeignedly with a conjugal amity, by continually approving yourself in all your words and actions a faithful and discreet husband; and by living, not only at home and privately with your own household and family, but in the face also of all men and open view of the world, devoutly, virtuously, and chastely, as you would have her on her side to deport and to demean herself towards you, as becomes a godly, loyal, and respectful wife, who maketh conscience to keep inviolable the tie of a matrimonial oath. For as that looking-glass is not the best which is most decked with gold and precious stones, but that which representeth to the eye the liveliest shapes of objects set before it, even so that wife should not be most esteemed who richest is and of the noblest race, but she who, fearing God, conforms herself nearest unto the humour of her husband.
Consider how the moon doth not borrow her light from Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, or any other of the planets, nor yet from any of those splendid stars which are set in the spangled firmament, but from her husband only, the bright sun, which she receiveth from him more or less, according to the manner of his aspect and variously bestowed eradiations. Just so should you be a pattern to your wife in virtue, goodly zeal, and true devotion, that by your radiance in darting on her the aspect of an exemplary goodness, she, in your imitation, may outshine the luminaries of all other women. To this effect you daily must implore God’s grace to the protection of you both. You would have me then, quoth Panurge, twisting the whiskers of his beard on either side with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, to espouse and take to wife the prudent frugal woman described by Solomon. Without all doubt she is dead, and truly to my best remembrance I never saw her; the Lord forgive me! Nevertheless, I thank you, father. Eat this slice of marchpane, it will help your digestion; then shall you be presented with a cup of claret hippocras, which is right healthful and stomachal. Let us proceed.
Chapter 3.XXXI.—How the physician Rondibilis counselleth Panurge.
Panurge, continuing his discourse, said, The first word which was spoken by him who gelded the lubberly, quaffing monks of Saussiniac, after that he had unstoned Friar Cauldaureil, was this, To the rest. In like manner, I say, To the rest. Therefore I beseech you, my good Master Rondibilis, should I marry or not? By the raking pace of my mule, quoth Rondibilis, I know not what answer to make to this problem of yours.
You say that you feel in you the pricking stings of sensuality, by which you are stirred up to venery. I find in our faculty of medicine, and we have founded our opinion therein upon the deliberate resolution and final decision of the ancient Platonics, that carnal concupiscence is cooled and quelled five several ways.
First, By the means of wine. I shall easily believe that, quoth Friar John, for when I am well whittled with the juice of the grape I care for nothing else, so I may sleep. When I say, quoth Rondibilis, that wine abateth lust, my meaning is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperancy proceeding from the excessive drinking of strong liquor there is brought upon the body of such a swill-down boozer a chillness in the blood, a slackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative seed, a numbness and hebetation of the senses, with a perversive wryness and convulsion of the muscles—all which are great lets and impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is that Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and drunkards, is most commonly painted beardless and clad in a woman’s habit, as a person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch. Wine, nevertheless, taken moderately, worketh quite contrary effects, as is implied by the old proverb, which saith that Venus takes cold when not accompanied with Ceres and Bacchus. This opinion is of great antiquity, as appeareth by the testimony of Diodorus the Sicilian, and confirmed by Pausanias, and universally held amongst the Lampsacians, that Don Priapus was the son of Bacchus and Venus.
Secondly, The fervency of lust is abated by certain drugs, plants, herbs, and roots, which make the taker cold, maleficiated, unfit for, and unable to perform the act of generation; as hath been often experimented in the water-lily, heraclea, agnus castus, willow-twigs, hemp-stalks, woodbine, honeysuckle, tamarisk, chaste tree, mandrake, bennet, keckbugloss, the skin of a hippopotam, and many other such, which, by convenient doses proportioned to the peccant humour and constitution of the patient, being duly and seasonably received within the body—what by their elementary virtues on the one side and peculiar properties on the other—do either benumb, mortify, and beclumpse with cold the prolific semence, or scatter and disperse the spirits which ought to have gone along with and conducted the sperm to the places destined and appointed for its reception, or lastly, shut up, stop, and obstruct the ways, passages, and conduits through which the seed should have been expelled, evacuated, and ejected. We have nevertheless of those ingredients which, being of a contrary operation, heat the blood, bend the nerves, unite the spirits, quicken the senses, strengthen the muscles, and thereby rouse up, provoke, excite, and enable a man to the vigorous accomplishment of the feat of amorous dalliance. I have no need of those, quoth Panurge, God be thanked, and you, my good master. Howsoever, I pray you, take no exception or offence at these my words; for what I have said was not out of any illwill I did bear to you, the Lord he knows.
Thirdly, The ardour of lechery is very much subdued and mated by frequent labour and continual toiling. For by painful exercises and laborious working so great a dissolution is brought upon the whole body, that the blood, which runneth alongst the channels of the veins thereof for the nourishment and alimentation of each of its members, hath neither time, leisure, nor power to afford the seminal resudation, or superfluity of the third concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for the conservation of the individual, whose preservation she more heedfully regardeth than the propagating of the species and the multiplication of humankind. Whence it is that Diana is said to be chaste, because she is never idle, but always busied about her hunting. For the same reason was a camp or leaguer of old called castrum, as if they would have said castum; because the soldiers, wrestlers, runners, throwers of the bar, and other such-like athletic champions as are usually seen in a military circumvallation, do incessantly travail and turmoil, and are in a perpetual stir and agitation. To this purpose Hippocrates also writeth in his book, De Aere, Aqua et Locis, that in his time there were people in Scythia as impotent as eunuchs in the discharge of a venerean exploit, because that without any cessation, pause, or respite they were never from off horseback, or otherwise assiduously employed in some troublesome and molesting drudgery.
On the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the philosophers say that idleness is the mother of luxury. When it was asked Ovid, Why Aegisthus became an adulterer? he made no other answer but this, Because he was idle. Who were able to rid the world of loitering and laziness might easily frustrate and disappoint Cupid of all his designs, aims, engines, and devices, and so disable and appal him that his bow, quiver, and darts should from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burden to him, for that it could not then lie in his power to strike or wound any of either sex with all the arms he had. He is not, I believe, so expert an archer as that he can hit the cranes flying in the air, or yet the young stags skipping through the thickets, as the Parthians knew well how to do; that is to say, people moiling, stirring and hurrying up and down, restless, and without repose. He must have those hushed, still, quiet, lying at a stay, lither, and full of ease, whom he is able, though his mother help him, to touch, much less to pierce with all his arrows. In confirmation hereof, Theophrastus, being asked on a time what kind of beast or thing he judged a toyish, wanton love to be? he made answer, that it was a passion of idle and sluggish spirits. From which pretty description of tickling love-tricks that of Diogenes’s hatching was not very discrepant, when he defined lechery the occupation of folks destitute of all other occupation. For this cause the Syconian engraver Canachus, being desirous to give us to understand that sloth, drowsiness, negligence, and laziness were the prime guardians and governesses of ribaldry, made the statue of Venus, not standing, as other stone-cutters had used to do, but sitting.
Fourthly, The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager study; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of the spirits, that oftentimes there do not remain so many behind as may suffice to push and thrust forwards the generative resudation to the places thereto appropriated, and therewithal inflate the cavernous nerve whose office is to ejaculate the moisture for the propagation of human progeny. Lest you should think it is not so, be pleased but to contemplate a little the form, fashion, and carriage of a man exceeding earnestly set upon some learned meditation, and deeply plunged therein, and you shall see how all the arteries of his brains are stretched forth and bent like the string of a crossbow, the more promptly, dexterously, and copiously to suppeditate, furnish, and supply him with store of spirits sufficient to replenish and fill up the ventricles, seats, tunnels, mansions, receptacles, and cellules of the common sense,—of the imagination, apprehension, and fancy,—of the ratiocination, arguing, and resolution,—as likewise of the memory, recordation, and remembrance; and with great alacrity, nimbleness, and agility to run, pass, and course from the one to the other, through those pipes, windings, and conduits which to skilful anatomists are perceivable at the end of the wonderful net where all the arteries close in a terminating point; which arteries, taking their rise and origin from the left capsule of the heart, bring through several circuits, ambages, and anfractuosities, the vital, to subtilize and refine them to the ethereal purity of animal spirits. Nay, in such a studiously musing person you may espy so extravagant raptures of one as it were out of himself, that all his natural faculties for that time will seem to be suspended from each their proper charge and office, and his exterior senses to be at a stand. In a word, you cannot otherwise choose than think that he is by an extraordinary ecstasy quite transported out of what he was, or should be; and that Socrates did not speak improperly when he said that philosophy was nothing else but a meditation upon death. This possibly is the reason why Democritus deprived himself of the sense of seeing, prizing at a much lower rate the loss of his sight than the diminution of his contemplations, which he frequently had found disturbed by the vagrant, flying-out strayings of his unsettled and roving eyes. Therefore is it that Pallas, the goddess of wisdom, tutoress and guardianess of such as are diligently studious and painfully industrious, is, and hath been still accounted a virgin. The Muses upon the same consideration are esteemed perpetual maids; and the Graces, for the like reason, have been held to continue in a sempiternal pudicity.
I remember to have read that Cupid, on a time being asked of his mother Venus why he did not assault and set upon the Muses, his answer was that he found them so fair, so sweet, so fine, so neat, so wise, so learned, so modest, so discreet, so courteous, so virtuous, and so continually busied and employed,—one in the speculation of the stars,—another in the supputation of numbers,—the third in the dimension of geometrical quantities,—the fourth in the composition of heroic poems,—the fifth in the jovial interludes of a comic strain,—the sixth in the stately gravity of a tragic vein,—the seventh in the melodious disposition of musical airs,—the eighth in the completest manner of writing histories and books on all sorts of subjects,—and the ninth in the mysteries, secrets, and curiosities of all sciences, faculties, disciplines, and arts whatsoever, whether liberal or mechanic,—that approaching near unto them he unbended his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame and fear that by mischance he might do them some hurt or prejudice. Which done, he thereafter put off the fillet wherewith his eyes were bound to look them in the face, and to hear their melody and poetic odes. There took he the greatest pleasure in the world, that many times he was transported with their beauty and pretty behaviour, and charmed asleep by the harmony; so far was he from assaulting them or interrupting their studies. Under this article may be comprised what Hippocrates wrote in the afore-cited treatise concerning the Scythians; as also that in a book of his entitled Of Breeding and Production, where he hath affirmed all such men to be unfit for generation as have their parotid arteries cut—whose situation is beside the ears—for the reason given already when I was speaking of the resolution of the spirits and of that spiritual blood whereof the arteries are the sole and proper receptacles, and that likewise he doth maintain a large portion of the parastatic liquor to issue and descend from the brains and backbone.
Fifthly, By the too frequent reiteration of the act of venery. There did I wait for you, quoth Panurge, and shall willingly apply it to myself, whilst anyone that pleaseth may, for me, make use of any of the four preceding. That is the very same thing, quoth Friar John, which Father Scyllino, Prior of Saint Victor at Marseilles, calleth by the name of maceration and taming of the flesh. I am of the same opinion,—and so was the hermit of Saint Radegonde, a little above Chinon; for, quoth he, the hermits of Thebaide can no more aptly or expediently macerate and bring down the pride of their bodies, daunt and mortify their lecherous sensuality, or depress and overcome the stubbornness and rebellion of the flesh, than by duffling and fanfreluching it five-and-twenty or thirty times a day. I see Panurge, quoth Rondibilis, neatly featured and proportioned in all the members of his body, of a good temperament in his humours, well-complexioned in his spirits, of a competent age, in an opportune time, and of a reasonably forward mind to be married. Truly, if he encounter with a wife of the like nature, temperament, and constitution, he may beget upon her children worthy of some transpontine monarchy; and the sooner he marry it will be the better for him, and the more conducible for his profit if he would see and have his children in his own time well provided for. Sir, my worthy master, quoth Panurge, I will do it, do not you doubt thereof, and that quickly enough, I warrant you. Nevertheless, whilst you were busied in the uttering of your learned discourse, this flea which I have in mine ear hath tickled me more than ever. I retain you in the number of my festival guests, and promise you that we shall not want for mirth and good cheer enough, yea, over and above the ordinary rate. And, if it may please you, desire your wife to come along with you, together with her she-friends and neighbours—that is to be understood—and there shall be fair play.
Chapter 3.XXXII.—How Rondibilis declareth cuckoldry to be naturally one of the appendances of marriage.
There remaineth as yet, quoth Panurge, going on in his discourse, one small scruple to be cleared. You have seen heretofore, I doubt not, in the Roman standards, S.P.Q.R., Si, Peu, Que, Rien. Shall not I be a cuckold? By the haven of safety, cried out Rondibilis, what is this you ask of me? If you shall be a cuckold? My noble friend, I am married, and you are like to be so very speedily; therefore be pleased, from my experiment in the matter, to write in your brain with a steel pen this subsequent ditton, There is no married man who doth not run the hazard of being made a cuckold. Cuckoldry naturally attendeth marriage. The shadow doth not more naturally follow the body, than cuckoldry ensueth after marriage to place fair horns upon the husbands’ heads.
And when you shall happen to hear any man pronounce these three words, He is married; if you then say he is, hath been, shall be, or may be a cuckold, you will not be accounted an unskilful artist in framing of true consequences. Tripes and bowels of all the devils, cries Panurge, what do you tell me? My dear friend, answered Rondibilis, as Hippocrates on a time was in the very nick of setting forwards from Lango to Polystilo to visit the philosopher Democritus, he wrote a familiar letter to his friend Dionysius, wherein he desired him that he would, during the interval of his absence, carry his wife to the house of her father and mother, who were an honourable couple and of good repute; because I would not have her at my home, said he, to make abode in solitude. Yet, notwithstanding this her residence beside her parents, do not fail, quoth he, with a most heedful care and circumspection to pry into her ways, and to espy what places she shall go to with her mother, and who those be that shall repair unto her. Not, quoth he, that I do mistrust her virtue, or that I seem to have any diffidence of her pudicity and chaste behaviour,—for of that I have frequently had good and real proofs,—but I must freely tell you, She is a woman. There lies the suspicion.
My worthy friend, the nature of women is set forth before our eyes and represented to us by the moon, in divers other things as well as in this, that they squat, skulk, constrain their own inclinations, and, with all the cunning they can, dissemble and play the hypocrite in the sight and presence of their husbands; who come no sooner to be out of the way, but that forthwith they take their advantage, pass the time merrily, desist from all labour, frolic it, gad abroad, lay aside their counterfeit garb, and openly declare and manifest the interior of their dispositions, even as the moon, when she is in conjunction with the sun, is neither seen in the heavens nor on the earth, but in her opposition, when remotest from him, shineth in her greatest fulness, and wholly appeareth in her brightest splendour whilst it is night. Thus women are but women.
When I say womankind, I speak of a sex so frail, so variable, so changeable, so fickle, inconstant, and imperfect, that in my opinion Nature, under favour, nevertheless, of the prime honour and reverence which is due unto her, did in a manner mistake the road which she had traced formerly, and stray exceedingly from that excellence of providential judgment by the which she had created and formed all other things, when she built, framed, and made up the woman. And having thought upon it a hundred and five times, I know not what else to determine therein, save only that in the devising, hammering, forging, and composing of the woman she hath had a much tenderer regard, and by a great deal more respectful heed to the delightful consortship and sociable delectation of the man, than to the perfection and accomplishment of the individual womanishness or muliebrity. The divine philosopher Plato was doubtful in what rank of living creatures to place and collocate them, whether amongst the rational animals, by elevating them to an upper seat in the specifical classis of humanity, or with the irrational, by degrading them to a lower bench on the opposite side, of a brutal kind, and mere bestiality. For nature hath posited in a privy, secret, and intestine place of their bodies, a sort of member, by some not impertinently termed an animal, which is not to be found in men. Therein sometimes are engendered certain humours so saltish, brackish, clammy, sharp, nipping, tearing, prickling, and most eagerly tickling, that by their stinging acrimony, rending nitrosity, figging itch, wriggling mordicancy, and smarting salsitude (for the said member is altogether sinewy and of a most quick and lively feeling), their whole body is shaken and ebrangled, their senses totally ravished and transported, the operations of their judgment and understanding utterly confounded, and all disordinate passions and perturbations of the mind thoroughly and absolutely allowed, admitted, and approved of; yea, in such sort that if nature had not been so favourable unto them as to have sprinkled their forehead with a little tincture of bashfulness and modesty, you should see them in a so frantic mood run mad after lechery, and hie apace up and down with haste and lust, in quest of and to fix some chamber-standard in their Paphian ground, that never did the Proetides, Mimallonides, nor Lyaean Thyades deport themselves in the time of their bacchanalian festivals more shamelessly, or with a so affronted and brazen-faced impudency; because this terrible animal is knit unto, and hath an union with all the chief and most principal parts of the body, as to anatomists is evident. Let it not here be thought strange that I should call it an animal, seeing therein I do no otherwise than follow and adhere to the doctrine of the academic and peripatetic philosophers. For if a proper motion be a certain mark and infallible token of the life and animation of the mover, as Aristotle writeth, and that any such thing as moveth of itself ought to be held animated and of a living nature, then assuredly Plato with very good reason did give it the denomination of an animal, for that he perceived and observed in it the proper and self-stirring motions of suffocation, precipitation, corrugation, and of indignation so extremely violent, that oftentimes by them is taken and removed from the woman all other sense and moving whatsoever, as if she were in a swounding lipothymy, benumbing syncope, epileptic, apoplectic palsy, and true resemblance of a pale-faced death.
Furthermore, in the said member there is a manifest discerning faculty of scents and odours very perceptible to women, who feel it fly from what is rank and unsavoury, and follow fragrant and aromatic smells. It is not unknown to me how Cl. Galen striveth with might and main to prove that these are not proper and particular notions proceeding intrinsically from the thing itself, but accidentally and by chance. Nor hath it escaped my notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus’s balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the solid truth.
I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range, and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient, submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason. Therefore here will I make an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the said animal being once satiated—if it be possible that it can be contented or satisfied—by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished. For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious animal. Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your medicinal art for hindering one’s head to be horny-graffed at home whilst his feet are plodding abroad? Yes, that I have, my gallant friend, answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I frequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a standing of two thousand years. Hearken and take good heed. You are, quoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all my heart. Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and convenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the stomach, because of a kind of astringent stypticity which is in that sort of fruit, and is helpful to the first concoction. But what? I think I speak Latin before clerks. Stay till I give you somewhat to drink out of this Nestorian goblet. Will you have another draught of white hippocras? Be not afraid of the squinzy, no. There is neither squinant, ginger, nor grains in it; only a little choice cinnamon, and some of the best refined sugar, with the delicious white wine of the growth of that vine which was set in the slips of the great sorbapple above the walnut-tree.
Chapter 3.XXXIII.—Rondibilis the physician’s cure of cuckoldry.
At that time, quoth Rondibilis, when Jupiter took a view of the state of his Olympic house and family, and that he had made the calendar of all the gods and goddesses, appointing unto the festival of every one of them its proper day and season, establishing certain fixed places and stations for the pronouncing of oracles and relief of travelling pilgrims, and ordaining victims, immolations, and sacrifices suitable and correspondent to the dignity and nature of the worshipped and adored deity—Did not he do, asked Panurge, therein as Tintouille, the Bishop of Auxerre, is said once to have done? This noble prelate loved entirely the pure liquor of the grape, as every honest and judicious man doth; therefore was it that he had an especial care and regard to the bud of the vine-tree as to the great-grandfather of Bacchus. But so it is, that for sundry years together he saw a most pitiful havoc, desolation, and destruction made amongst the sprouts, shootings, buds, blossoms, and scions of the vines by hoary frost, dank fogs, hot mists, unseasonable colds, chill blasts, thick hail, and other calamitous chances of foul weather, happening, as he thought, by the dismal inauspiciousness of the holy days of St. George, St. Mary, St. Paul, St. Eutrope, Holy Rood, the Ascension, and other festivals, in that time when the sun passeth under the sign of Taurus; and thereupon harboured in his mind this opinion, that the afore-named saints were Saint Hail-flingers, Saint Frost-senders, Saint Fog-mongers, and Saint Spoilers of the Vine-buds. For which cause he went about to have transmitted their feasts from the spring to the winter, to be celebrated between Christmas and Epiphany, so the mother of the three kings called it, allowing them with all honour and reverence the liberty then to freeze, hail, and rain as much as they would; for that he knew that at such a time frost was rather profitable than hurtful to the vine-buds, and in their steads to have placed the festivals of St. Christopher, St. John the Baptist, St. Magdalene, St. Anne, St. Domingo, and St. Lawrence; yea, and to have gone so far as to collocate and transpose the middle of August in and to the beginning of May, because during the whole space of their solemnity there was so little danger of hoary frosts and cold mists, that no artificers are then held in greater request than the afforders of refrigerating inventions, makers of junkets, fit disposers of cooling shades, composers of green arbours, and refreshers of wine.
Jupiter, said Rondibilis, forgot the poor devil Cuckoldry, who was then in the court at Paris very eagerly soliciting a peddling suit at law for one of his vassals and tenants. Within some few days thereafter, I have forgot how many, when he got full notice of the trick which in his absence was done unto him, he instantly desisted from prosecuting legal processes in the behalf of others, full of solicitude to pursue after his own business, lest he should be foreclosed, and thereupon he appeared personally at the tribunal of the great Jupiter, displayed before him the importance of his preceding merits, together with the acceptable services which in obedience to his commandments he had formerly performed; and therefore in all humility begged of him that he would be pleased not to leave him alone amongst all the sacred potentates, destitute and void of honour, reverence, sacrifices, and festival ceremonies. To this petition Jupiter’s answer was excusatory, that all the places and offices of his house were bestowed. Nevertheless, so importuned was he by the continual supplications of Monsieur Cuckoldry, that he, in fine, placed him in the rank, list, roll, rubric, and catalogue, and appointed honours, sacrifices, and festival rites to be observed on earth in great devotion, and tendered to him with solemnity. The feast, because there was no void, empty, nor vacant place in all the calendar, was to be celebrated jointly with, and on the same day that had been consecrated to the goddess Jealousy. His power and dominion should be over married folks, especially such as had handsome wives. His sacrifices were to be suspicion, diffidence, mistrust, a lowering pouting sullenness, watchings, wardings, researchings, plyings, explorations, together with the waylayings, ambushes, narrow observations, and malicious doggings of the husband’s scouts and espials of the most privy actions of their wives. Herewithal every married man was expressly and rigorously commanded to reverence, honour, and worship him, to celebrate and solemnize his festival with twice more respect than that of any other saint or deity, and to immolate unto him with all sincerity and alacrity of heart the above-mentioned sacrifices and oblations, under pain of severe censures, threatenings, and comminations of these subsequent fines, mulcts, amerciaments, penalties, and punishments to be inflicted on the delinquents: that Monsieur Cuckoldry should never be favourable nor propitious to them; that he should never help, aid, supply, succour, nor grant them any subventitious furtherance, auxiliary suffrage, or adminiculary assistance; that he should never hold them in any reckoning, account, or estimation; that he should never deign to enter within their houses, neither at the doors, windows, nor any other place thereof; that he should never haunt nor frequent their companies or conversations, how frequently soever they should invocate him and call upon his name; and that not only he should leave and abandon them to rot alone with their wives in a sempiternal solitariness, without the benefit of the diversion of any copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods towards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences which ought to be performed respectively to their divinities—as is evidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres, against idle ploughmen and tillers of the ground; in Pomona, to unworthy fruiterers and costard-mongers; in Neptune, towards dissolute mariners and seafaring men, in Vulcan, towards loitering smiths and forgemen; and so throughout the rest. Now, on the contrary, this infallible promise was added, that unto all those who should make a holy day of the above-recited festival, and cease from all manner of worldly work and negotiation, lay aside all their own most important occasions, and to be so retchless, heedless, and careless of what might concern the management of their proper affairs as to mind nothing else but a suspicious espying and prying into the secret deportments of their wives, and how to coop, shut up, hold at under, and deal cruelly and austerely with them by all the harshness and hardships that an implacable and every way inexorable jealousy can devise and suggest, conform to the sacred ordinances of the afore-mentioned sacrifices and oblations, he should be continually favourable to them, should love them, sociably converse with them, should be day and night in their houses, and never leave them destitute of his presence. Now I have said, and you have heard my cure.
Ha, ha, ha! quoth Carpalin, laughing; this is a remedy yet more apt and proper than Hans Carvel’s ring. The devil take me if I do not believe it! The humour, inclination, and nature of women is like the thunder, whose force in its bolt or otherwise burneth, bruiseth, and breaketh only hard, massive, and resisting objects, without staying or stopping at soft, empty, and yielding matters. For it pasheth into pieces the steel sword without doing any hurt to the velvet scabbard which ensheatheth it. It chrusheth also and consumeth the bones without wounding or endamaging the flesh wherewith they are veiled and covered. Just so it is that women for the greater part never bend the contention, subtlety, and contradictory disposition of their spirits unless it be to do what is prohibited and forbidden.
Verily, quoth Hippothadee, some of our doctors aver for a truth that the first woman of the world, whom the Hebrews call Eve, had hardly been induced or allured into the temptation of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life if it had not been forbidden her so to do. And that you may give the more credit to the validity of this opinion, consider how the cautelous and wily tempter did commemorate unto her, for an antecedent to his enthymeme, the prohibition which was made to taste it, as being desirous to infer from thence, It is forbidden thee; therefore thou shouldst eat of it, else thou canst not be a woman.