Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 2 by François Rabelais
page 31 of 151 (20%)
page 31 of 151 (20%)
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lifted it out of the ground with his little finger as easily as you would
have done a hawk's bell or bellwether's tingle-tangle; but, before he would carry it to the foresaid tower or steeple appointed for it, he would needs make some music with it about the town, and ring it alongst all the streets as he carried it in his hand, wherewith all the people were very glad. But there happened one great inconveniency, for with carrying it so, and ringing it about the streets, all the good Orleans wine turned instantly, waxed flat and was spoiled, which nobody there did perceive till the night following; for every man found himself so altered and a-dry with drinking these flat wines, that they did nothing but spit, and that as white as Malta cotton, saying, We have of the Pantagruel, and our very throats are salted. This done, he came to Paris with his retinue. And at his entry everyone came out to see him--as you know well enough that the people of Paris is sottish by nature, by B flat and B sharp--and beheld him with great astonishment, mixed with no less fear that he would carry away the palace into some other country, a remotis, and far from them, as his father formerly had done the great peal of bells at Our Lady's Church to tie about his mare's neck. Now after he had stayed there a pretty space, and studied very well in all the seven liberal arts, he said it was a good town to live in, but not to die; for that the grave-digging rogues of St. Innocent used in frosty nights to warm their bums with dead men's bones. In his abode there he found the library of St. Victor a very stately and magnific one, especially in some books which were there, of which followeth the Repertory and Catalogue, Et primo, The for Godsake of Salvation. The Codpiece of the Law. The Slipshoe of the Decretals. The Pomegranate of Vice. The Clew-bottom of Theology. |
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