For the use of the warriors I am about to broach of new my barrel to give
them a taste (which by two former volumes of mine, if by the deceitfulness
and falsehood of printers they had not been jumbled, marred, and spoiled,
you would have very well relished), and draw unto them, of the growth of
our own trippery pastimes, a gallant third part of a gallon, and
consequently a jolly cheerful quart of Pantagruelic sentences, which you
may lawfully call, if you please, Diogenical: and shall have me, seeing I
cannot be their fellow-soldier, for their faithful butler, refreshing and
cheering, according to my little power, their return from the alarms of the
enemy; as also for an indefatigable extoller of their martial exploits and
glorious achievements. I shall not fail therein, par lapathium acutum de
dieu; if Mars fail not in Lent, which the cunning lecher, I warrant you,
will be loth to do.

I remember nevertheless to have read, that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, one
day, amongst the many spoils and booties which by his victories he had
acquired, presenting to the Egyptians, in the open view of the people, a
Bactrian camel all black, and a party-coloured slave, in such sort as that
the one half of his body was black and the other white, not in partition of
breadth by the diaphragma, as was that woman consecrated to the Indian
Venus whom the Tyanean philosopher did see between the river Hydaspes and
Mount Caucasus, but in a perpendicular dimension of altitude; which were
things never before that seen in Egypt. He expected by the show of these
novelties to win the love of the people. But what happened thereupon? At
the production of the camel they were all affrighted, and offended at the
sight of the party-coloured man--some scoffed at him as a detestable
monster brought forth by the error of nature; in a word, of the hope which
he had to please these Egyptians, and by such means to increase the
affection which they naturally bore him, he was altogether frustrate and