accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick. | all my life-time, held debt to be as an And there is made, what? Debts: a thing union or conjunction of the heavens with most precious and dainty, of great use the earth, and the whole cement whereby and antiquity. Debts, I say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the combination of all the consonants with each of the vowels heretofore projected, reckoned and calculated by the noble Xenocrates. To judge of the perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors, is the readiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical arithmetic. You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself environed and surrounded with brigades of creditors; humble, fawning and full of their reverences: And whilst I remark, that as I look more favorably upon, and give a cheerful countenance to one than another, the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first dispatched, and the foremost in the date of payment; and he valueth my smiles at the rate of ready money. It seemeth unto me, that I then act and personate the God of the Passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels and cherubims. These are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my parasites, my saluters, my givers of good morrows, and perpetual orators, which makes me verily think, that the supremest height of heroic virtue, described by Hesiod, consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all human creatures seem to aim at, and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties in the way, and incumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harbored in the breast of every one, to be still creating more debts, and new creditors. Yet doth it not lie in the power of every one to be a debtor. To acquire creditors is not at the disposure of each man's arbitrament. You nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity. You ask me when I will be out of debt. Well, to go yet farther on, and possibly worse in your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not the race of mankind is kept together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy, that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam would very suddenly perish without it. Therefore, perhaps, I do not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great Soul of the Universe, which (according to the opinion of the Academics) vivified all manner of things. In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudice of spirit, in a clear and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if you please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor or creditor, that is to say, a world without debts. There amongst the planets will be no regular course. All will be in disorder. Jupiter reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn, will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain will be like to hang up all the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes, devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements. Saturn, no doubt, combining with Mars will reduce the world into a chaos of confusion. Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would scorn to be any longer their Camillus' as he was of old termed in the Hetrurian tongue; for it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to them. Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing. The moon will remain bloody and obscure: For to what end should the sun impart unto her any of his light? He owed her nothing. Nor yet will the sun shine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted nourishment by vapors and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus maintained they were cherished and alimented. There would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alternation, nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself obliged to the 1 That is, their servant; for the Ancients called by 1Xenocrates made them to amount to 100,200,000 the name of Camilli those young boys that attended syllables from the Greek alphabet. on the priests in the sacrifices. little world, which is man, you will find in him a terrible jostling coyle and clutter: The head will not lend the sight of his eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs will refuse to bear up the body; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the members; the heart will be weary of its continual motion for the beating of the pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will withdraw the use of their bellows; the liver will desist from conveying any more blood through the veins for the good of the whole; the bladder will not urine thereby will be totally stopped. The brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall into a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling from the sinews, and motion from the muscles: Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing nothing, lending nothing and borrowing nothing, you would see a more dangerous conspiration than that which Esop exposed in his Apologue. Such a world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish but perish very quickly. Were it Esculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and the chafing soul full of indignation take its flight to all the devils of hell after my money. other, as having borrowed nothing at all | if conformable to the pattern of this griev from it. Earth then will not become wa- ous, peevish, and perverse world which ter, water will not be changed into air, lendeth nothing, you figure and liken the of air will be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth will produce nothing but monsters, titans, giants; no rain will descend upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there be in it any summer or autumn. Lucifer will break loose, and issue forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned devils will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as well of the greater as of the lesser nations. Such a world without lending, will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling, be indebted to the kidneys, so that the more unruly and irregular than that of the Rector of Paris; a devil of an hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion, than that of the plagues [plays] of Douay. Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labor to expect aid or succor from any, or to cry, fire, water, murther, for none will put to their helping hand. Why? He lent no money; there is nothing due to him. Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his ruin or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and would never thereafter have lent any thing. In short, Faith, Hope, and Charity would be quite banished from such a world; for men are born to relieve and assist one another; and in their stead On the contrary, be pleased to represent would succeed and be introduced defiance, unto your fancy another world, wheredisdain and rancor, with the most ex- in every one lendeth, and every one oweth, ecrable troop of all evils, all impreca- all are debtors, and all creditors. O how tions and all miseries. Whereupon you great will that harmony be, which shall will think, and that not amiss, that Pan- thereby result from the regular motions dora had there split her unlucky bottle. of the heavens ! Methinks I hear it Men unto men will be wolves, hob- every whit as well as Plato did. What thrushers and goblins, (as were Lycaon, sympathy there will be amongst the eleBellerophon, Nebuchodonosor) plunder- ments! O how delectable then unto naers, highway-robbers, cut-throats, rap-ture will be our own works and producparees, murtherers, poisoners, assassina- tions! Whilst Ceres appeareth laden tors, lewd, wicked, malevolent, pernicious with corn, Bacchus with wines, Flora haters, set against everybody, like to Ismael, Metabus, or Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos; in such sort, that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish Then will among the race of manentertained in the air, and bullocks fed kind, peace, love, benevolence, fidelity, in the bottom of the ocean, than to sup- tranquillity, rest, banquets, feastings, port or tolerate a rascally rabble of peo-joy, gladness, gold, silver, single money, ple that will not lend. These fellows (I chains, rings, with other ware, and vow) do I hate with a perfect hatred; and chaffer of that nature be found to trot with flowers, Pomona with fruits, and Juno fair in a clear air, wholesome and pleasant: I lose myself in this high contemplation. from hand to hand; no suits at law, no wars, no strife, debate, nor wrangling; none will be there an usurer, none will be there a pinchpenny, a scrapegood wretch, or churlish hard-hearted refuser. Good God! Will this not be the golden age in the reign of Saturn? The true idea of the Olympic regions wherein, all other virtues ceasing, Charity alone ruleth, governeth, domineereth, and triumpheth? All will be fair and goodly people there, all just and virtuous. Happy world! O people of that world most happy! Yea, thrice and four times blessed is that people! I think in very deed that I am amongst them, and swear to you, by my good forsooth, that if this glorious aforesaid world had a pope, abounding with cardinals, that so he might have the association of a sacred college, in the space of a very few years you should be sure to see the saints much thicker in the roll, more numerous wonder-working and mirifick, more services, more vows, more staff-bearers, more wax candles than are all those in the nine bishoprics of Brittany, St. Yves only excepted. Consider, Sir, I pray you, how the noble Patelin, having a mind to deify, and extol even to the third heavens, the father of William Josseaume, said no more but this, And he did lend his goods to those who were desirous of them.i O the fine saying! Now let our microcosm be fancied conformable to this model in all its members; lending, borrowing and owing, (that is to say) according to its own nature: For nature hath not to any other end created man, but to borrow and lend; no greater the harmony amongst the heavenly spheres, than that which shall be found in its well ordered policy. The intention of the founder of this microcosm is, to have a soul therein to be entertained, which is lodged there, as a guest with its host, it may live there for a while. Life consisteth in blood, blood is the seat of the soul; therefore the chiefest work of the microcosm, is, to be making blood continually. At this Forge are exercised all the members of the body; none is exempted from labor, each operates a part, and doth its 1 This is in the Farce of Patelin, where that arch cheat, in order to engage Mr. William Josseaume to give him credit for his cloth, artfully falls to praising William's father, and so gained his point. proper office. And such is their hierarchy, that perpetually the one borrows from the other, the one lends the other, and the one is the other's debtor. The stuff and matter convenient which nature giveth to be turned into blood is bread and wine. All kind of nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in these two, and from hence in the Gothic tongue is called Campanage. To find out this meat and drink, to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the feet do walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the eyes guide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of the stomach, by means of little sourish black humor (called melancholy) which is transmitted thereto from the milk, giveth warning to shut in the food. The tongue doth make the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth do chaw it, and the stomach doth receive, digest and chilify it, the mesaraick veins suck out of it what is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through special conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty; thereafter it is carried to the liver; where it being changed again, it, by the virtue of that new transmutation, becomes blood. What joy, conjecture you, will then be founded amongst those officers, when they see this rivulet of gold, which is their sole restorative? No greater is the joy of alchimists, when after long travel, toil and expense, they see in their furnaces the transmutation. Then is it that every member doth prepare itself, and strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure: The kidneys, through the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which you call urine: and there send it away through the ureters to be slipt downwards; where, in a lower receptacle, and proper for it, (to wit the bladder) it is kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due time. The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the grounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom thereof, which you term melancholy: The bottle of the gall subtracts from thence all the superfluous choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house to be yet better purified and fined, that is, the heart, which by its agitation of diastolick and systolick motions so neatly subtilizeth and inflames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection, and through the veins is sent to all the members; each parcel of the body draws it then unto itself, and after its own fashion is cherished and alimentated by it: Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breast, yea, all; and then it is that who before were lenders, now become debtors. The heart doth in its left-side ventricle so thinnify the blood that it thereby obtains the name of spiritual; which being sent through the arteries to all the members of the body, serveth to warm and winnow or fan the other blood which runneth through the veins: The lights never cease with its lappets and bellows to cool and refresh it; in acknowledgment of which good the heart through the arterial vein imparts unto it the choicest of its blood: At last it is made so fine and subtle within the rete mirabile, that thereafter those animal spirits are framed and composed of it; by means whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution, deliberation, ratiocination, and memory, have their rise, actings, and operations. 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. WHY MONKS LOVE TO BE IN What is the reason, asked friar John, that monks are always to be found in kitchens; and kings, emperors and popes are never there? Is there not, said Rhizotomus, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the kettles, and pans, which as the load-stone attracts iron, draws the monks there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will or no? He means forms following matter, as Averroës calls them, answered Epistemon, Right, said friar John. I'll not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel, for it is somewhat ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily, but I'll tell you what I have heard. Cops body, I sink, I drown, I perish, I wander astray, and quite fly out of myself, when I enter into the consideration of the profound abyss of this world, thus lending, thus owing. Believe me, it is a divine thing to lend, to owe an heroic virtue. Yet is not this all; this little Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day world thus lending, owing, and borrow- coming into one of the tents, where his ing, is so good and charitable, that no cooks use to dress his meat, and finding sooner is the above-specified alimenta- there poet Antagoras frying a conger, and tion finished, but that it forthwith projec- holding the pan himself, merrily asked teth, and hath already forecast, how it him, pray, Mr. Poet, was Homer frying shall lend to those who are not as yet congers when he writ the deeds of Ågaborn, and by that loan endeavor what memnon? Antagoras readily answered: it may, to eternize itself, and multiply in but do you think, sir, that when Agamemimages like the pattern, that is, children. non did them, he made it his business to To this end every member doth of the know if any in his camp were frying conchoicest and most precious of its nour-gers? The king thought it an indecency ishment, pare and cut off a portion, then instantly dispatcheth it downwards to that place, where nature hath prepared for it very fit vessels and receptacles through which descending to the genitories by long ambages, circuits and flexuosities, it receiveth a competent form, and rooms apt enough both in the man and woman for the future conservation and perpetuating of human kind. All this is done by loans and debts of the one unto the other; and hence have we this word, the that a poet should be thus a frying in a kitchen, and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing for a king to be found in such a place I'll clap another story upon the neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry answered one day to the Duke of Guise. They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against the Emperor Charles the Fifth, Breton armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St. George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement. Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there and can prove it easily; nay, even where you, my Lord dared not have been The Duke began to resent this as too rash and saucy, but Breton easily appeased him, and set them all a laughing. I gad, my Lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way, I was all the while with your page Jack sulking in a privy where you had not dared hide your head as I did. THE FOOL'S JUDGMENT. At Paris, in the roast-meat cookery of the petit chastelet, before the cook-shop of one of the roast-meat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and found it so besmoked with the vapor, to be savory; which the cook observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about discamping and going away; but by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence shot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded payment for the smoke of his roast-meat. The porter answered, that he had sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he was not indebted to him in any thing: as for the smoke in question, that, although he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated: besides that, before that time it had never been seen nor heard, that roastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris. for fuel to his kitchen fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them to him by one of the bottom rings, which he had caught in his hand, the sturdy porter got out of his gripes, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood to his own defence. The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the gaping hoydens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts, to see what the issue would be of that babbling strife and contention In the interim of this dispute, to very good purpose Seyny John, the fool and citizen of Paris, happened to be there, whom the cook perceiving, said to the porter, wilt thou refer and submit unto the noble Seyny John, the decision of the difference and controversy which is be twixt us? Yes, by the blood of a goose, answered the porter, I am content. Seyny John the fool, finding that the cook and porter had compromised the determination of their variance and debate to the discretion of his award and arbitrament, after that the reasons on either side, whereupon was grounded the mutual fierceness of their brawling jar, had been to the full displayed and laid open before him, commanded the porter to draw out of the fob of his belt, a piece of money, if he had it. Whereupon the porter immediately without delay, in reverence to the authority of such a judicious umpire, put the tenth part of a silver Phillip into his hand. This little Phillip, Seyny John took, then set it on his left shoulder, to try by feeling if it was of a sufficient weight; after that, laying it on the palm of his hand, he made it ring and tingle, to understand by the ear if it was of a good alloy in the metal whereof it was composed: thereafter he put it to the ball or apple of his left eye, to explore by the sight if it was well stamped and marked; all which being done, in a profound silence of the whole doltish people, who were there spectators of this pageantry, to the great hope of the cook's, and despair of the porter's prevalency in the suit that was in agitation, he finally caused the porter to make it sound several times upon the stall of the cook's shop. The cook hereto replied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for nought a porter whom he had never seen before, with the smoke of his roast-meat; and thereupon swore, that if he would not forthwith content and satisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got, that he Then with a presidential majesty holdwould take his crooked staves from off ing his bawble (sceptre-like) in his hand, his back; which instead of having loads muffling his head with a hood of marten thereafter laid upon them, should serve | skins, each side whereof had the resem |