How Epistemon disliked the institution of Lent.
Pray did you observe, continued Epistemon, how this damned ill-favoured
Semiquaver mentioned March as the best month for caterwauling? True, said
Pantagruel; yet Lent and March always go together, and the first was
instituted to macerate and bring down our pampered flesh, to weaken and
subdue its lusts, to curb and assuage the venereal rage.
By this, said Epistemon, you may guess what kind of a pope it was who first
enjoined it to be kept, since this filthy wooden-shoed Semiquaver owns that
his spoon is never oftener nor deeper in the porringer of lechery than in
Lent. Add to this the evident reasons given by all good and learned
physicians, affirming that throughout the whole year no food is eaten that
can prompt mankind to lascivious acts more than at that time.
As, for example, beans, peas, phasels, or long-peason, ciches, onions,
nuts, oysters, herrings, salt-meats, garum (a kind of anchovy), and salads
wholly made up of venereous herbs and fruits, as--
Rocket, Parsley, Hop-buds,
Nose-smart, Rampions, Figs,
Taragon, Poppy, Rice,
Cresses, Celery, Raisins, and others.
It would not a little surprise you, said Pantagruel, should a man tell you
that the good pope who first ordered the keeping of Lent, perceiving that
at that time o’ year the natural heat (from the centre of the body, whither
it was retired during the winter’s cold) diffuses itself, as the sap does
in trees, through the circumference of the members, did therefore in a
manner prescribe that sort of diet to forward the propagation of mankind.
What makes me think so, is that by the registers of christenings at Touars
it appears that more children are born in October and November than in the
other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards ‘twill be easily
found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.
I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small
pleasure, I’ll assure you. But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert
ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food
that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,
your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father
confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that
run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell. So
the silly cod’s-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more
at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even
forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives. Dixi; I have
done.
You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried
Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will
be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand. I
know they will, and have heard ‘em say were it not for Lent their art would
soon fall into contempt, and they’d get nothing, for hardly anybody would
be sick.
All distempers are sowed in lent; ‘tis the true seminary and native bed of
all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes
souls mad and uneasy. For then the devils do their best, and drive a
subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.
‘Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one
face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with
their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,
anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion. However, I’ll
not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in
that point; yet I speak to the purpose.
Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear
bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this
fellow? Is he a rank heretic? Fri. Much.
Pan. Ought he not to be singed? Fri. Well.
Pan. As soon as may be? Fri. Right.
Pan. Should not he be scalded first? Fri. No.
Pan. How then, should he be roasted? Fri. Quick.
Pan. Till at last he be? Fri. Dead.
Pan. What has he made you? Fri. Mad.
Pan. What d’ye take him to be? Fri. Damned.
Pan. What place is he to go to? Fri. Hell.
Pan. But, first, how would you have ‘em served here? Fri. Burnt.
Pan. Some have been served so? Fri. Store.
Pan. That were heretics? Fri. Less.
Pan. And the number of those that are to be warmed thus hereafter is?
Fri. Great.
Pan. How many of ‘em do you intend to save? Fri. None.
Pan. So you’d have them burned? Fri. All.
I wonder, said Epistemon to Panurge, what pleasure you can find in talking
thus with this lousy tatterdemalion of a monk. I vow, did I not know you
well, I might be ready to think you had no more wit in your head than he
has in both his shoulders. Come, come, scatter no words, returned Panurge;
everyone as they like, as the woman said when she kissed her cow. I wish I
might carry him to Gargantua; when I’m married he might be my wife’s fool.
And make you one, cried Epistemon. Well said, quoth Friar John. Now, poor
Panurge, take that along with thee, thou’rt e’en fitted; ‘tis a plain case
thou’lt never escape wearing the bull’s feather; thy wife will be as common
as the highway, that’s certain.