HOW GARGANTUA WAS TAUGHT LATIN.
[Illustration: Initial O.]
Old Father Grandgousier had a very large body of his own; and, after
the fashion of all good-natured giants that have ever lived, when
he was pleased he was hugely pleased. So it happened that, when his
friends came around him to drink his good wine, and eat his rich
dinners, and to tell him how bright his boy was, he shook all over with
mighty laughter. "Ho! ho! ho! ho!" he shouted, till the big strong
bottles that stood on his table jingled, and the very rafters of the
dining-hall seemed to laugh with them.
"You say that my little Gargantua is quick? Ho! ho! Now, my good lords,
Philip of Macedon had a son who was quick too. Yes, they said that
he was as quick as that," snapping his fingers together so that they
went cric-crac like a pistol shot. "You have heard of the lad, and
that wild Bucephalus of his? Bah! I am sure my little brigand upstairs
would never have waited to turn the head of Bucephalus to the sun
before riding him, but would have mounted and ridden him before all the
people, with his tail turned straight to the sun, and his shadow thrown
plain before him! You have decided me, my friends. Gargantua is already
five years old. He is only a baby; but he is a Giant's child with more
wit than age,--that makes a difference. I have been thinking seriously
lately; and it is high time that I should give my youngster to some
wise man to make him wise according to his capacity."
And this Father Grandgousier began to do at once. He called, the very
next day, upon one of his subjects, worthy Master Tubal Holofernes,
a man famed for wisdom the country round, to teach Gargantua his A B
C's. I am sorry to say that Master Holofernes seemed, from the first
hour, to be just a little afraid of his small pupil, who, although only
a baby, could easily have studied his alphabet on his teacher's bald
pate, and had to bend his head even to do that. But Father Grandgousier
was, on the whole, well satisfied with his son. Gargantua could, after
five years and three months, actually recite his alphabet from A to Z;
then from Z to A; then catch it sharply up in the middle, bunching M
and N together; naming the letters in fours, in eights, and in twelves,
as quickly as you can think, forward and back again, and again, till
all the old friends--whose noses, from good living, had become very
red, and whose paunches were very big--swore, over their wine, that he
was the smartest child of ten years they _ever_ had seen. Of course,
Father Grandgousier thought all this something wonderful. He ho-ho'ed
and he ha-ha'ed! with great swelling laughter, after the fashion of
Giants, until he was all out of breath, and his friends had to beg him
to stop for fear of choking.
[Illustration: TUBAL HOLOFERNES.]
But Father Grandgousier could not rest here. He declared that
Gargantua must now learn Latin. The young Giant was made, not only to
study Latin, but to write, besides that, his own books of study in
Gothic letters, there being no printing-presses in those days.
To learn all this took him thirteen years, six months, and two weeks.
By this time, Gargantua had grown so tall that, when called upon to
recite, he could not make his answer heard by Master Holofernes, who
was rather deaf, unless by bending down and whispering it, because his
voice was so strong that his ordinary tone would have, at that close
distance, broken the drums of the old man's ears. What he thought he
needed, therefore, was a writing-desk. It was very hard to find a desk
quite suited to him for writing down what he had to say. They hunted
near and far for one. At last one was found in the possession of a
stunted old giant, living in a cave near by, who all his life had been
hoping to grow as tall as King Grandgousier himself. This poor giant
had, however, been thrown into despair because he had suddenly stopped
growing, and still lacked a dozen feet or so of being as tall as he
wanted to be. He gave up the desk he had used so long, with a great
sob that shook the mountain in the caves of which he lived. Gargantua,
although not full-grown, did not find a desk of seven hundred thousand
pounds' weight at all in his way, for it was just suited to his size.
His ink-horn, weighing as much as a ton of merchandise, swung by
heavy iron chains from the side of the desk. From it Gargantua, with
a pen-holder as large as the great Pillar of Enay, used to write his
Latin exercises. Master Holofernes kept him at all this for eighteen
years and eleven months, and so thorough did he become that he could
recite his Latin exercises by heart, backwards. He went on studying
after this some of the harder books for sixteen years and two months,
when he had the misfortune of losing his old teacher very suddenly.
One day, unexpectedly, Father Grandgousier called his friends around
him,--who had, by this time, gained redder noses and bigger paunches
than ever,--to see how strong his son was in Latin. He also invited a
friend of his who, he was sure, did know Latin.
[Illustration: THE FRIEND WHO KNEW LATIN.]
Then he shouted out, "Come, my little one, and show these friends of
thy father what thou hast learned of Latin. See, here is a gentleman
who knows it as he does his breviary. He shall examine thee, and tell
us how much thou hast learned under faithful Master Holofernes, whom we
all honor."
And the learned friend began on poor Gargantua, and poured on him
question after question for six mortal hours. Father Grandgousier, who,
by the way, had understood not one word of it all, turned to him at the
end triumphantly:--
"Now, good sir, art thou not convinced that my boy knows his Latin?"
Then, that learned friend, although just a little trembling, to be
sure, answered quietly enough:--
"With my Liege's permission, Prince Gargantua does not know any more
Latin than Your own Gracious Majesty."
"_What!_
WHAT!
WHAT!!!"
roared Father Grandgousier, each time making that very short word
longer and louder and fiercer, and jumping to his feet he fairly kicked
learned Master Holofernes out of the palace; meanwhile, rolling his
eyes around in his rage, and gnashing his teeth in so horrible a way
that the noses of his old friends who had sat at his table for sixty
years, and more, turned pale for once, through fright; and there
were those of the household who said that, as they fled from the
dining-room, in terror, even the paunches of these old friends seemed,
somehow, to have grown as flat as the royal pancakes they had just been
eating.
[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE TUTOR.]