their fore-rooms? There's a fine question to be
asked, cried Pantagruel. Yes, yes, answered Xenomanes; you may find there
many goodly hypocritesses, jolly spiritual actresses, kind hermitesses,
women that have a plaguy deal of religion; then there's the copies of 'em,
little hypocritillons, sham sanctitos, and hermitillons. Foh! away with
them, cried Friar John; a young saint, an old devil! (Mark this, an old
saying, and as true a one as, a young whore, an old saint.) Were there not
such, continued Xenomanes, the isle of Chaneph, for want of a
multiplication of progeny, had long ere this been desert and desolate.

Pantagruel sent them by Gymnast in the pinnace seventy-eight thousand fine
pretty little gold half-crowns, of those that are marked with a lantern.
After this he asked, What's o'clock? Past nine, answered Epistemon. It is
then the best time to go to dinner, said Pantagruel; for the sacred line so
celebrated by Aristophanes in his play called Concionatrices is at hand,
never failing when the shadow is decempedal.

Formerly, among the Persians, dinner-time was at a set hour only for kings;
as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when
that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner. So we find in Plautus a
certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of
hour-glasses and dials as being unnecessary things, there being no clock
more regular than the belly.

Diogenes being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, The rich
when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat. Physicians more
properly say that the canonical hours are,

To rise at five, to dine at nine,
To sup at five, to sleep at nine.

The famous king Petosiris's magic was different,--Here the officers for the
gut came in, and got ready the tables and cupboards; laid the cloth, whose
sight and pleasant smell were very comfortable; and brought plates,
napkins, salts, tankards, flagons, tall-boys, ewers, tumblers, cups,
goblets, basins, and cisterns.

Friar John, at the head of the stewards, sewers, yeomen of the pantry, and
of the mouth, tasters, carvers, cupbearers, and cupboard-keepers, brought
four stately pasties, so huge that they put me in mind of the four bastions
at Turin. Ods-fish, how manfully did they storm them! What havoc did they
make with the long train of dishes that came after them! How bravely did
they stand to their pan-puddings, and paid off thei