How Homenas gave Pantagruel some bon-Christian pears.
Epistemon, Friar John, and Panurge, seeing this doleful catastrophe, began,
under the cover of their napkins, to cry Meeow, meeow, meeow; feigning to
wipe their eyes all the while as if they had wept. The wenches were doubly
diligent, and brought brimmers of Clementine wine to every one, besides
store of sweetmeats; and thus the feasting was revived.
Before we arose from table, Homenas gave us a great quantity of fair large
pears, saying, Here, my good friends, these are singular good pears. You
will find none such anywhere else, I dare warrant. Every soil bears not
everything, you know. India alone boasts black ebony; the best incense is
produced in Sabaea; the sphragitid earth at Lemnos; so this island is the
only place where such fine pears grow. You may, if you please, make
seminaries with their pippins in your country.
I like their taste extremely, said Pantagruel. If they were sliced, and
put into a pan on the fire with wine and sugar, I fancy they would be very
wholesome meat for the sick, as well as for the healthy. Pray what do you
call ‘em? No otherwise than you have heard, replied Homenas. We are a
plain downright sort of people, as God would have it, and call figs, figs;
plums, plums; and pears, pears. Truly, said Pantagruel, if I live to go
home--which I hope will be speedily, God willing--I’ll set off and graff
some in my garden in Touraine, by the banks of the Loire, and will call
them bon-Christian or good-Christian pears, for I never saw better
Christians than are these good Papimans. I would like him two to one
better yet, said Friar John, would he but give us two or three cartloads of
yon buxom lasses. Why, what would you do with them? cried Homenas. Quoth
Friar John, No harm, only bleed the kind-hearted souls straight between the
two great toes with certain clever lancets of the right stamp; by which
operation good Christian children would be inoculated upon them, and the
breed be multiplied in our country, in which there are not many over-good,
the more’s the pity.
Nay, verily, replied Homenas, we cannot do this; for you would make them
tread their shoes awry, crack their pipkins, and spoil their shapes. You
love mutton, I see; you will run at sheep. I know you by that same nose
and hair of yours, though I never saw your face before. Alas! alas! how
kind you are! And would you indeed damn your precious soul? Our decretals
forbid this. Ah, I wish you had them at your finger’s-end. Patience, said
Friar John; but, si tu non vis dare, praesta, quaesumus. Matter of
breviary. As for that, I defy all the world, and I fear no man that wears
a head and a hood, though he were a crystalline, I mean a decretaline
doctor.
Dinner being over, we took our leave of the right reverend Homenas, and of
all the good people, humbly giving thanks; and, to make them amends for
their kind entertainment, promised them that, at our coming to Rome, we
would make our applications so effectually to the pope that he would
speedily be sure to come to visit them in person. After this we went
o’board.
Pantagruel, by an act of generosity, and as an acknowledgment of the sight
of the pope’s picture, gave Homenas nine pieces of double friezed cloth of
gold to be set before the grates of the window. He also caused the church
box for its repairs and fabric to be quite filled with double crowns of
gold; and ordered nine hundred and fourteen angels to be delivered to each
of the lasses who had waited at table, to buy them husbands when they could
get them.