Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 4 by François Rabelais
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page 11 of 216 (05%)
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them. Which causes Herophilus much to blame the physician Callianax, who,
being asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this answer: Patroclus died, whom all allow By much a better man than you. Another, who had a mind to know the state of his distemper, asking him, after our merry Patelin's way: Well, doctor, does not my water tell you I shall die? He foolishly answered, No; if Latona, the mother of those lovely twins, Phoebus and Diana, begot thee. Galen, lib. 4, Comment. 6. Epidem., blames much also Quintus his tutor, who, a certain nobleman of Rome, his patient, saying to him, You have been at breakfast, my master, your breath smells of wine; answered arrogantly, Yours smells of fever; which is the better smell of the two, wine or a putrid fever? But the calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, perpetual eavesdroppers, has been so foul and excessive against me, that it had conquered my patience, and I had resolved not to write one jot more. For the least of their detractions were that my books are all stuffed with various heresies, of which, nevertheless, they could not show one single instance; much, indeed, of comical and facetious fooleries, neither offending God nor the king (and truly I own they are the only subject and only theme of these books), but of heresy not a word, unless they interpreted wrong, and against all use of reason and common language, what I had rather suffer a thousand deaths, if it were possible, than have thought; as who should make bread to be stone, a fish to be a serpent, and an egg to be a scorpion. This, my lord, emboldened me once to tell you, as I was complaining of it in your presence, that if I did not esteem myself a better Christian than they show themselves towards me, and if my life, writings, words, nay thoughts, betrayed to me one single spark of heresy, or I should in a detestable |
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