All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence
have we this word, the debt of marriage. Nature doth reckon pain to the
refuser, with a most grievous vexation to his members and an outrageous
fury amidst his senses. But, on the other part, to the lender a set
reward, accompanied with pleasure, joy, solace, mirth, and merry glee.



Chapter 3.V.

How Pantagruel altogether abhorreth the debtors and borrowers.

I understand you very well, quoth Pantagruel, and take you to be very good
at topics, and thoroughly affectioned to your own cause. But preach it up,
and patrocinate it, prattle on it, and defend it as much as you will, even
from hence to the next Whitsuntide, if you please so to do, yet in the end
you will be astonished to find how you shall have gained no ground at all
upon me, nor persuaded me by your fair speeches and smooth talk to enter
never so little into the thraldom of debt. You shall owe to none, saith
the holy Apostle, anything save love, friendship, and a mutual benevolence.

You serve me here, I confess, with fine graphides and diatyposes,
descriptions and figures, which truly please me very well. But let me tell
you, if you will represent unto your fancy an impudent blustering bully and
an importunate borrower, entering afresh and newly into a town already
advertised of his manners, you shall find that at his ingress the citizens
will be more hideously affrighted and amazed, and in a greater terror and
fear, dread, and trembling, than if the pest itself should step into it in
the very same garb and accoutrement wherein the Tyanean philosopher found
it within the city of Ephesus. And I am fully confirmed in the opinion,