Certain persons have reproached the Author for knowing no more about
the language of the olden times than hares do of telling stories.
Formerly these people would have been vilified, called cannibals,
churls, and sycophants, and Gomorrah would have been hinted at as
their natal place. But the Author consents to spare them the flowery
epithets of ancient criticism; he contents himself with wishing not to
be in their skin, for he would be disgusted with himself, and esteem
himself the vilest of scribblers thus to calumniate a poor little book
which is not in the style of any spoil-paper of these times. Ah!
ill-natured wretches! you should save your breath to cool your own
porridge! The Author consoles himself for his want of success in not
pleasing everyone by remembering that an old Tourainian, of eternal
memory, had put up with such contumely, that losing all patience, he
declared in one of his prologues, that he would never more put pen to
paper. Another age, but the same manners. Nothing changes, neither God
above nor men below. Thereupon of the Author continues his task with a
light heart, relying upon the future to reward his heavy labours.
And certes, it is a hard task to invent _A Hundred Droll Tales_, since
not only have ruffians and envious men opened fire upon him, but his
friends have imitated their example, and come to him saying “Are you
mad? Do you think it is possible? No man ever had in the depths of his
imagination a hundred such tales. Change the hyperbolic title of your
budget. You will never finish it.” These people are neither
misanthropes nor cannibals; whether they are ruffians I know not; but
for certain they are kind, good-natured friends; friends who have the
courage to tell you disagreeable things all your life along, who are
rough and sharp as currycombs, under the pretence that they are yours
to command, in all the mishaps of life, and in the hour of extreme
unction, all their worth will be known. If such people would only keep
these sad kindnesses; but they will not. When their terrors are proved
to have been idle, they exclaimed triumphantly, “Ha! ha! I knew it. I
always said so.”
In order not to discourage fine sentiments, intolerable though they
be, the Author leaves to his friends his old shoes, and in order to
make their minds easy, assures them that he has, legally protected and
exempt from seizure, seventy droll stories, in that reservoir of
nature, his brain. By the gods! they are precious yarns, well rigged
out with phrases, carefully furnished with catastrophes, amply clothed
with original humour, rich in diurnal and nocturnal effects, nor
lacking that plot which the human race has woven each minute, each
hour, each week, month, and year of the great ecclesiastical
computation, commenced at a time when the sun could scarcely see, and
the moon waited to be shown her way. These seventy subjects, which he
gives you leave to call bad subjects, full of tricks and impudence,
lust, lies, jokes, jests, and ribaldry, joined to the two portions
here given, are, by the prophet! a small instalment on the aforesaid
hundred.
Were it not a bad time for a bibliopolists, bibliomaniacs,
bibliographers, and bibliotheques which hinder bibliolatry, he would
have given them in a bumper, and not drop by drop as if he were
afflicted with dysury of the brain. He cannot possibly be suspected of
this infirmity, since he often gives good weight, putting several
stories into one, as is clearly demonstrated by several in this
volume. You may rely on it, that he has chosen for the finish, the
best and most ribald of the lot, in order that he may not be accused
of a senile discourse. Put then more likes with your dislikes, and
dislikes with your likes. Forgetting the niggardly behaviour of nature
to story-tellers, of whom there are not more than seven perfect in the
great ocean of human writers, others, although friendly, have been of
opinion that, at a time when everyone went about dressed in black, as
if in mourning for something, it was necessary to concoct works either
wearisomely serious or seriously wearisome; that a writer could only
live henceforward by enshrining his ideas in some vast edifice, and
that those who were unable to construct cathedrals and castles of
which neither stone nor cement could be moved, would die unknown, like
the Pope’s slippers. The friends were requested to declare which they
liked best, a pint of good wine, or a tun of cheap rubbish; a diamond
of twenty-two carats, or a flintstone weighing a hundred pounds; the
ring of Hans Carvel, as told by Rabelais, or a modern narrative
pitifully expectorated by a schoolboy. Seeing them dumbfounded and
abashed, it was calmly said to them, “Do you thoroughly understand,
good people? Then go your ways and mind your own businesses.”
The following, however, must be added, for the benefit of all of whom
it may concern:--The good man to whom we owe fables and stories of
sempiternal authority only used his tool on them, having taken his
material from others; but the workmanship expended on these little
figures has given them a high value; and although he was, like M.
Louis Ariosto, vituperated for thinking of idle pranks and trifles,
there is a certain insect engraved by him which has since become a
monument of perennity more assured than that of the most solidly built
works. In the especial jurisprudence of wit and wisdom the custom is
to steal more dearly a leaf wrested from the book of Nature and Truth,
than all the indifferent volumes from which, however fine they be, it
is impossible to extract either a laugh or a tear. The author has
licence to say this without any impropriety, since it is not his
intention to stand upon tiptoe in order to obtain an unnatural height,
but because it is a question of the majesty of his art, and not of
himself--a poor clerk of the court, whose business it is to have ink
in his pen, to listen to the gentleman on the bench, and take down the
sayings of each witness in this case. He is responsible for
workmanship, Nature for the rest, since from the Venus of Phidias the
Athenian, down to the little old fellow, Godenot, commonly called the
Sieur Breloque, a character carefully elaborated by one of the most
celebrated authors of the present day, everything is studied from the
eternal model of human imitations which belongs to all. At this honest
business, happy are the robbers that they are not hanged, but esteemed
and beloved. But he is a triple fool, a fool with ten horns on his
head, who struts, boasts, and is puffed up at an advantage due to the
hazard of dispositions, because glory lies only in the cultivation of
the faculties, in patience and courage.
As for the soft-voiced and pretty-mouthed ones, who have whispered
delicately in the author’s ear, complaining to him that they have
disarranged their tresses and spoiled their petticoats in certain
places, he would say to them, “Why did you go there?” To these remarks
he is compelled, through the notable slanders of certain people, to
add a notice to the well-disposed, in order that they may use it, and
end the calumnies of the aforesaid scribblers concerning him.
These droll tales are written--according to all authorities--at that
period when Queen Catherine, of the house of Medici, was hard at work;
for, during a great portion of the reign, she was always interfering
with public affairs to the advantage of our holy religion. The which
time has seized many people by the throat, from our defunct Master
Francis, first of that name, to the Assembly at Blois, where fell M.
de Guise. Now, even schoolboys who play at chuck-farthing, know that
at this period of insurrection, pacifications and disturbances, the
language of France was a little disturbed also, on account of the
inventions of the poets, who at that time, as at this, used each to
make a language for himself, besides the strange Greek, Latin,
Italian, German, and Swiss words, foreign phrases, and Spanish jargon,
introduced by foreigners, so that a poor writer has plenty of elbow
room in this Babelish language, which has since been taken in hand by
Messieurs de Balzac, Blaise Pascal, Furetiere, Menage, St. Evremonde,
de Malherbe, and others, who first cleaned out the French language,
sent foreign words to the rightabout, and gave the right of
citizenship to legitimate words used and known by everyone, but of
which the Sieur Ronsard was ashamed.
Having finished, the author returns to his lady-love, wishing every
happiness to those by whom he is beloved; to the others misfortune
according to their deserts. When the swallows fly homeward, he will
come again, not without the third and fourth volume, which he here
promises to the Pantagruelists, merry knaves, and honest wags of all
degrees, who have a wholesome horror of the sadness, sombre meditation
and melancholy of literary croakers.