d underprop the falling sky, if
you'll believe the wise mythologists, but they raised it some half an inch
too high, Atlas to entertain his guest Hercules more pleasantly, and
Hercules to make himself amends for the thirst which some time before had
tormented him in the deserts of Africa. Your good father, said Friar John,
interrupting him, takes care to free many people from such an
inconveniency; for I have been told by many venerable doctors that his
chief-butler, Turelupin, saves above eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly
to make servants, and all comers and goers, drink before they are a-dry.
As the camels and dromedaries of a caravan, continued Pantagruel, use to
drink for the thirst that's past, for the present, and for that to come, so
did Hercules; and being thus excessively raised, this gave new motion to
the sky, which is that of titubation and trepidation, about which our
crackbrained astrologers make such a pother. This, said Panurge, makes the
saying good:

While jolly companions carouse it together,
A fig for the storm, it gives way to good weather.

Nay, continued Pantagruel, some will tell you that we have not only
shortened the time of the calm, but also much disburthened the ship; not
like Aesop's basket, by easing it of the provision, but by breaking our
fasts; and that a man is more terrestrial and heavy when fasting than when
he has eaten and drank, even as they pretend that he weighs more dead than
living. However it is, you will grant they are in the right who take their
morning's draught and breakfast before a long journey; then say that the
horses will perform the better, and that a spur in the head is worth two in
the flank; or, in the same horse dialect--

That a cup in the pate
Is a mile in the gate.

Don't you know that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus
above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric
dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering
flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring
Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a
pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly
parts become soft and pliant.

Chapter 4.LXVI.

How, by Pantagruel's order, the Muses were saluted near the isle of
Ganabim.

This fair wind and as fine talk brought us in sight of a high land, which
Pantagruel discovering afar off, showed it X