chance. May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great
bowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a
battalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the
first night of our marriage! Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,
quoth Pantagruel. You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid
imprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a
business, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know
is usually at tennis called fifteen. At the next justling turn you may
readily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen. Is it
so, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter? And must my words be
thus interpreted? Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by
that valiant champion who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood sentry at
the hypogastrian cranny. Did you ever hitherto find me in the
confraternity of the faulty? Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for
ever and a day. I do the feat like a goodly friar or father confessor,
without default. And therein am I willing to be judged by the players. He
had no sooner spoke these words than the works of Virgil were brought in.
But before the book was laid open, Panurge said to Pantagruel, My heart,
like the furch of a hart in a rut, doth beat within my breast. Be pleased
to feel and grope my pulse a little on this artery of my left arm. At its
frequent rise and fall you would say that they swinge and belabour me after
the manner of a probationer, posed and put to a peremptory trial in the
examination of his sufficiency for the discharge of the learned duty of a
graduate in some eminent degree in the college of the Sorbonists.

But would you not hold it expedient, before we proceed any further, that we
should invocate Hercules and the Tenetian goddesses who in the chamber of
lots are said to rule, sit in judgment, and bear a presidential sway?
Neither him nor them, answered Pantagruel; only open up the leaves of the
book with your fingers, and set your nails awork.

Chapter 3.XII.

How Pantagruel doth explore by the Virgilian lottery what fortune Panurge
shall have in his marriage.

Then at the opening of the book in the sixteenth row of the lines of the
disclosed page did Panurge encounter upon this following verse:

Nec Deus hunc mensa, Dea nec dignata cubili est.

The god him from his table banished,
Nor would th