er in
length indeed, but in virtue and propriety; for as the unicorn purified
pools and fountains from filth and venom, so that other animals came and
drank securely there afterwards, in the like manner others might water
their nags, and dabble after him without fear of shankers, carnosities,
gonorrhoeas, buboes, crinkams, and such other plagues caught by those who
venture to quench their amorous thirst in a common puddle; for with his
nervous horn he removed all the infection that might be lurking in some
blind cranny of the mephitic sweet-scented hole.

Well, quoth Friar John, when you are sped, that is, when you are married,
we will make a trial of this on thy spouse, merely for charity sake, since
you are pleased to give us so beneficial an instruction.

Ay, ay, returned Panurge, and then immediately I'll give you a pretty
gentle aggregative pill of God, made up of two and twenty kind stabs with a
dagger, after the Caesarian way. Catso, cried Friar John, I had rather
take off a bumper of good cool wine.

I saw there the golden fleece formerly conquered by Jason, and can assure
you, on the word of an honest man, that those who have said it was not a
fleece but a golden pippin, because melon signifies both an apple and a
sheep, were utterly mistaken.

I saw also a chameleon, such as Aristotle describes it, and like that which
had been formerly shown me by Charles Maris, a famous physician of the
noble city of Lyons on the Rhone; and the said chameleon lived on air just
as the other did.

I saw three hydras, like those I had formerly seen. They are a kind of
serpent, with seven different heads.

I saw also fourteen phoenixes. I had read in many authors that there was
but one in the whole world in every century; but, if I may presume to speak
my mind, I declare that those who said this had never seen any, unless it
were in the land of Tapestry; though 'twere vouched by Claudian or
Lactantius Firmianus.

I saw the skin of Apuleius's golden ass.

I saw three hundred and nine pelicans.

Item, six thousand and sixteen Seleucid birds marching in battalia, and
picking up straggling grasshoppers in cornfields.

Item, some cynamologi, argatiles, caprimulgi, thynnunculs, onocrotals, or
bitterns, with their wide swallows, stymphalides, harpies, panthers,
dorcasses, or bucks, cemades, cynocephalises, satyrs, cartasans, tarands,
uri, monopses, or bonasi, neades, steras, marmosets, or monkeys, bugles,
musimons, byturo