d other
implements of pettifogging; the fourth looked like one of your vine-barbers
about Ocleans, with a jaunty pair of canvas trousers, a dosser, and a
pruning knife at his girdle.

As soon as the boat had clapped them on board, they all with one voice
asked, Have you seen him, good passengers, have you seen him? Who? asked
Pantagruel. You know who, answered they. Who is it? asked Friar John.
'Sblood and 'ounds, I'll thrash him thick and threefold. This he said
thinking that they inquired after some robber, murderer, or church-breaker.
Oh, wonderful! cried the four; do not you foreign people know the one?
Sirs, replied Epistemon, we do not understand those terms; but if you will
be pleased to let us know who you mean, we will tell you the truth of the
matter without any more ado. We mean, said they, he that is. Did you ever
see him? He that is, returned Pantagruel, according to our theological
doctrine, is God, who said to Moses, I am that I am. We never saw him, nor
can he be beheld by mortal eyes. We mean nothing less than that supreme
God who rules in heaven, replied they; we mean the god on earth. Did you
ever see him? Upon my honour, replied Carpalin, they mean the pope. Ay,
ay, answered Panurge; yea, verily, gentlemen, I have seen three of them,
whose sight has not much bettered me. How! cried they, our sacred
decretals inform us that there never is more than one living. I mean
successively, one after the other, returned Panurge; otherwise I never saw
more than one at a time.

O thrice and four times happy people! cried they; you are welcome, and more
than double welcome! They then kneeled down before us and would have
kissed our feet, but we would not suffer it, telling them that should the
pope come thither in his own person, 'tis all they could do to him. No,
certainly, answered they, for we have already resolved upon the matter. We
would kiss his bare arse without boggling at it, and eke his two pounders;
for he has a pair of them, the holy father, that he has; we find it so by
our fine decretals, otherwise he could not be pope. So that, according to
our subtle decretaline philosophy, this is a necessary consequence: he is
pope; therefore he has genitories, and should genitories no more be found
in the world, the world could no more have a pope.

While they were talking thus, Pantagruel inquired of one of the coxswain's
crew who those persons were. He answered that they were the four est