icken? Why is my Trasia thus sad and melancholy? Daddy, replied the
child, Persa is dead. This was the name of a little bitch which she loved
mightily. Hearing this, Paulus took assurance of a victory over Perses.

If time would permit us to discourse of the sacred Hebrew writ, we might
find a hundred noted passages evidently showing how religiously they
observed proper names and their significations.

He had hardly ended this discourse, when the two colonels arrived with
their soldiers, all well armed and resolute. Pantagruel made them a short
speech, entreating them to behave themselves bravely in case they were
attacked; for he could not yet believe that the Chitterlings were so
treacherous; but he bade them by no means to give the first offence, giving
them Carnival for the watchword.

Chapter 4.XXXVIII.

How Chitterlings are not to be slighted by men.

You shake your empty noddles now, jolly topers, and do not believe what I
tell you here, any more than if it were some tale of a tub. Well, well, I
cannot help it. Believe it if you will; if you won't, let it alone. For
my part, I very well know what I say. It was in the Wild Island, in our
voyage to the Holy Bottle. I tell you the time and place; what would you
have more? I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient
giants that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa,
and set among those the shady Olympus, to dash out the gods' brains,
unnestle them, and scour their heavenly lodgings. Theirs was no small
strength, you may well think, and yet they were nothing but Chitterlings
from the waist downwards, or at least serpents, not to tell a lie for the
matter.

The serpent that tempted Eve, too, was of the Chitterling kind, and yet it
is recorded of him that he was more subtle than any beast of the field.
Even so are Chitterlings. Nay, to this very hour they hold in some
universities that this same tempter was the Chitterling called Ithyphallus,
into which was transformed bawdy Priapus, arch-seducer of females in
paradise, that is, a garden, in Greek.

Pray now tell me who can tell but that the Swiss, now so bold and warlike,
were formerly Chitterlings? For my part, I would not take my oath to the
contrary. The Himantopodes, a nation very famous in Ethiopia, according to
Pliny's description, are Chitterlings, and nothing else. If all this will
not satisfy your worships, or remove your incredulity, I would have