Everybody then taking heed, and hearkening with great silence, the
Englishman lift up on high into the air his two hands severally, clunching
in all the tops of his fingers together, after the manner which, a la
Chinonnese, they call the hen's arse, and struck the one hand on the other
by the nails four several times. Then he, opening them, struck the one
with the flat of the other till it yielded a clashing noise, and that only
once. Again, in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards
four times in opening them. Then did he lay them joined, and extended the
one towards the other, as if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers
unto God. Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his right hand, and put
the thumb thereof into the nostril of the same side, holding his four
fingers straight out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point of
his nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making the other wink with a
profound depression of the eyebrows and eyelids. Then lifted he up his
left hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and
elevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly correspondent to the
situation of his right hand, with the distance of a cubit and a half
between them. This done, in the same form he abased towards the ground
about the one and the other hand. Lastly, he held them in the midst, as
aiming right at the Englishman's nose. And if Mercury,--said the
Englishman. There Panurge interrupted him, and said, You have spoken,
Mask.

Then made the Englishman this sign. His left hand all open he lifted up
into the air, then instantly shut into his fist the four fingers thereof,
and his thumb extended at length he placed upon the gristle of his nose.
Presently after, he lifted up his right hand all open, and all open abased
and bent it downwards, putting the thumb thereof in the very place where
the little finger of the left hand did close in the fist, and the four
right-hand fingers he softly moved in the air. Then contrarily he did with