no, said I; by St. Adauras, that will I not, for thou wilt be hanged one
time or another. And thou, said he, wilt be interred some time or other.
Now which is most honourable, the air or the earth? Ho, grosse pecore!

Whilst the pages are at their banqueting, I keep their mules, and to
someone I cut the stirrup-leather of the mounting side till it hang but by
a thin strap or thread, that when the great puffguts of the counsellor or
some other hath taken his swing to get up, he may fall flat on his side
like a pork, and so furnish the spectators with more than a hundred francs'
worth of laughter. But I laugh yet further to think how at his home-coming
the master-page is to be whipped like green rye, which makes me not to
repent what I have bestowed in feasting them. In brief, he had, as I said
before, three score and three ways to acquire money, but he had two hundred
and fourteen to spend it, besides his drinking.



Chapter 2.XVIII.

How a great scholar of England would have argued against Pantagruel, and
was overcome by Panurge.

In that same time a certain learned man named Thaumast, hearing the fame
and renown of Pantagruel's incomparable knowledge, came out of his own
country of England with an intent only to see him, to try thereby and prove
whether his knowledge in effect was so great as it was reported to be. In
this resolution being arrived at Paris, he went forthwith unto the house of
the said Pantagruel, who was lodged in the palace of St. Denis, and was
then walking in the garden thereof with Panurge, philosophizing after the
fashion of the Peripatetics. At his first entrance he startled, and was