merry bells here were as silent as if they had lost their tongues, I mean
their clappers.

During these troublesome times they called to their assistance the
emperors, kings, dukes, earls, barons, and commonwealths of the world that
live on t'other side the water; nor was this schism and sedition at an end
till one of them died, and the plurality was reduced to a unity.

We then asked what moved those birds to be thus continually chanting and
singing. He answered that it was the bells that hung on the top of their
cages. Then he said to us, Will you have me make these monk-hawks whom you
see bardocuculated with a bag such as you use to still brandy, sing like
any woodlarks? Pray do, said we. He then gave half-a-dozen pulls to a
little rope, which caused a diminutive bell to give so many ting-tangs; and
presently a parcel of monk-hawks ran to him as if the devil had drove 'em,
and fell a-singing like mad.

Pray, master, cried Panurge, if I also rang this bell could I make those
other birds yonder, with red-herring-coloured feathers, sing? Ay, marry
would you, returned Aedituus. With this Panurge hanged himself (by the
hands, I mean) at the bell-rope's end, and no sooner made it speak but
those smoked birds hied them thither and began to lift up their voices and
make a sort of untowardly hoarse noise, which I grudge to call singing.
Aedituus indeed told us that they fed on nothing but fish, like the herns
and cormorants of the world, and that they were a fifth kind of cucullati
newly stamped.

He added that he had been told by Robert Valbringue, who lately passed that
way in his return from Africa, that a sixth kind was to fly hither out of
hand, which he called capus-hawks, more grum, vinegar-faced, brain-sick,