to pray for you, that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a
blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly
with you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you,
he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase
new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a
shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk's earth fill
up his ditch. When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution
of the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the
funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear
enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, perforce,
they were to die with them for company. Did not they incessantly send up
their supplications to their great god Mercury, as likewise unto Dis, the
father of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in
health? Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to
look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly? For by
those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death.
Believe me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech
Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than
that you should die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than
the arm, and love silver better than their own lives. As it evidently
appeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged
themselves because the price of the corn and wines was fallen by the return
of a gracious season. To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went
on in his discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my
destiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me shrewdly to my plunges,
and have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and
creditors. And yet did I, in this only respect and consideration of being
a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable. For against
the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet,
without having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First