GARGANTUA IS BORN.
[Illustration: INITIAL K.]
King Grandgousier--the fifty-seventh in a straight line from Chalbroth,
the first Giant--was a jovial King in his day. Although a Giant, he
was the pink of politeness and kindly feeling. His whole life was one
continual dinner. He was very fond of his own ease, this jovial King,
but he also loved to make those around him happy. He kept open house,
and the sun never rose on a day when there was not some high lord or
some poor pilgrim at his table, eating and drinking of his best. He had
a great horror of seeing people thirsty around him. "There is too much
good wine flowing in my kingdom for anybody to feel thirsty. Everybody
should drink before he is dry," he was fond of saying. So one of the
main duties of his Chief Butler Turelupin was to make all the servants,
all comers and goers, drink before they were dry. It was said to take
eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly to do this. He never was known to
look at the clothes a guest wore,--oh, no, not he, that good, hearty
old King Grandgousier! And it was a pretty sight to see, whenever a
guest or a friend wished to say anything privately, how tenderly the
old Giant would pick him up, and put him on his knee, and bend his
great head and listen ever so carefully to try and find out what he had
to say. His head was lifted so far above the ground that, otherwise,
one would have had to shout out loud enough for all in the palace to
hear.
[Illustration: KING GRANDGOUSIER KEEPS OPEN HOUSE.]
King Grandgousier was very fond of his wine, and could drink,--being a
giant,--at a single meal, more than a dozen common men could manage
to swallow at a dozen meals each.[1] He was also very fond of salt
meat. He never failed to have on hand a good supply of French hams,
from Mayence and Bayonne,--the finest known in those days,--superb
smoked beef-tongues; an abundance of chitterlings, when in season,
and salt beef, with mustard to spice the whole. All these fine
things were reinforced by sausages from Bigorre, Longaulnay, and
Rouargue,--the very best in all France. But there was something which
King Grandgousier loved above everything in the way of eating, and that
was _tripes_. So fond was he of them that he had ordered all the royal
meadows to be searched, and all the fat beeves grazing in the royal
meadows, three hundred and sixty-seven thousand and fourteen of them,
to be killed, so that there might be plenty of powdered beef to flavor
the royal wine for the season. Then he had the Royal Herald, with great
flourish of trumpets, to name a day on which all his neighbors--brave
fellows and good players at ninepins--were to join him in a Great Feast
of Tripes.
[1] Children must remember that times have changed for the better since
the wild days of these old giants. To drink so hard and long that a
man, from too much wine, would fall under the table and lie there
because not able to move, was looked upon as a virtue then. Now, in
our happier days, we know it to be a virtue for a man to keep himself
sober, and a shame for him to be seen drunk.
[Illustration: THE KING AND QUEEN LOVE TRIPES.]
King Grandgousier had a fair and stately wife named Gargamelle. She was
a daughter of the King of the Parpaillons, and was herself a giantess,
but not quite so tall as her husband. Grandgousier and Gargamelle
dearly loved one another, and all that they wanted in this world was a
son to bear the father's name, and be King after him. Queen Gargamelle
liked to be in the open air, and see games of ninepins and ball and
leap-frog played by nimble men and women. And Grandgousier, at such
games, was always found seated at her side, like a good husband,
seeming to enjoy them as much as she did.
At last, one fine day, a little boy was born to them.
He must have been a wonderful baby; because just as soon as he was
born, instead of crying "_Mie! mie! mie!_" as any other baby would have
done, he shouted out at the top of his lungs, "Drink! drink! drink!"
There never were such lungs as his, everybody said. The old Doctor
himself, and the Three Wise Old Women who were there, all declared that
he had the biggest throat ever known,--not even excepting his father's.
Now it happened that, of all the days of the year, the very day the
Royal Herald had proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets, for the famous
Feast of Tripes, was the very day on which the baby Prince was born.
When the great news was carried to King Grandgousier, who was drinking
and making merry with his friends, that he had a son, and that the
young Prince was already bawling for his drink, his joy almost choked
him, and he could only find breath to say in French:--
"_Que grand tu as!_"--meaning "What a big throat thou hast!"
Everybody, including Queen Gargamelle, when she heard of it, the
family Doctor, and the Three Old Wise Women, laughed at this joke of
the King, and declared that it was the very best name that could be
given to the royal babe. From that moment, they began, when talking to
him or speaking of him, to call him little Prince _Que-grand-tu-as!_
Although they ran these four words trippingly together, and nobody not
in the secret would have thought it more than a very strange name, yet,
somehow, it was too long; and so, little by little, they kept changing
till the very oldest of the Three Old Wise Women, who had been, one hot
day, half-dozing over the cradle, started up suddenly, crying:--
"I have it!"
"Well, what have you?" called the second oldest, who was wide awake,
sharply.
"The name for our dear little Prince!"
"Don't be too sure of that, gossip. But why don't you say what it is?"
she snapped in an awful curiosity, and just the least bit jealous.
"GARGANTUA!"
"Oh, my!" said the third oldest, who was a mild sort of old lady.
* * * * *
Some say that it was the lords and neighbors who were feasting on the
tripes, when the old King cried out, _Que grand tu as!_ who had shouted
back that the young Prince ought to be called "Gargantua." I am rather
afraid that the oldest of the Three Wise Old Women had been listening
at the door of the royal banqueting hall, when she ought to have been
in Queen Gargamelle's chamber.