essed Touraine is your
mother; for from thence there comes hither every year such a vast store of
good things, that we were told by some folks of the place that happened to
touch at this island, that your Duke of Touraine's income will not afford
him to eat his bellyful of beans and bacon (a good dish spoiled between
Moses and Pythagoras) because his predecessors have been more than liberal
to these most holy birds of ours, that we might here munch it, twist it,
cram it, gorge it, craw it, riot it, junket it, and tickle it off, stuffing
our puddings with dainty pheasants, partridges, pullets with eggs, fat
capons of Loudunois, and all sorts of venison and wild fowl. Come, box it
about; tope on, my friends. Pray do you see yon jolly birds that are
perched together, how fat, how plump, and in good case they look, with the
income that Touraine yields us! And in faith they sing rarely for their
good founders, that is the truth on't. You never saw any Arcadian birds
mumble more fairly than they do over a dish when they see these two gilt
batons, or when I ring for them those great bells that you see above their
cages. Drink on, sirs, whip it away. Verily, friends, 'tis very fine
drinking to-day, and so 'tis every day o' the week; then drink on, toss it
about, here's to you with all my soul. You are most heartily welcome;
never spare it, I pray you; fear not we should ever want good bub and
belly-timber; for, look here, though the sky were of brass, and the earth
of iron, we should not want wherewithal to stuff the gut, though they were
to continue so seven or eight years longer than the famine in Egypt. Let
us then, with brotherly love and charity, refresh ourselves here with the
creature.

Woons, man, cried Panurge, what a rare time you have on't in this world!
Psha, returned Aedituus, this is nothing to what we shall have in t'other;
the Elysian fields will be the least that can fall to our lot. Come, in
the meantime let us drink here; come, here's to thee, old fuddlecap.

Your first Siticines, said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a
means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so
few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together--I mean, a
paradise in this life, and another in the next. Sure you were born wrapt
in your mother's smickets! O happy creatures! O more than men! Would I
had the luck to fare like you! (Motteux inserts Chapter XVI. after Chapter
VI.)