to do. I am, quoth Panurge, my dear gossip Epistemon, of a mind
and resolution to marry, but am afraid of being a cuckold and to be
unfortunate in my wedlock. For this cause have I made a vow to young St.
Francis--who at Plessis-les-Tours is much reverenced of all women,
earnestly cried unto by them, and with great devotion, for he was the first
founder of the confraternity of good men, whom they naturally covet,
affect, and long for--to wear spectacles in my cap, and to carry no
codpiece in my breeches, until the present inquietude and perturbation of
my spirits be fully settled.

Truly, quoth Epistemon, that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen.
It is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto
yourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying
abroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man. This
whimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise
made by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against
the Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which they
hoped should have decided it for their advantage, vowed to carry never any
hair on their heads till preallably they had recovered the loss of both
their honour and lands. As likewise to the memory of the vow of a pleasant
Spaniard called Michael Doris, who vowed to carry in his hat a piece of the
shin of his leg till he should be revenged of him who had struck it off.
Yet do not I know which of these two deserveth most to wear a green and
yellow hood with a hare's ears tied to it, either the aforesaid
vainglorious champion, or that Enguerrant, who having forgot the art and
manner of writing histories set down by the Samosatian philosopher, maketh
a most tediously long narrative and relation thereof. For, at the first
reading of such a profuse discourse, one would think it had been broached
for the introducing of a story of great importance and moment concerning
the waging of some formidable war, or the notable change and mutation of
potent states and kingdoms; but, in conclusion, the world laugheth at the
capricious champion, at the Englishman who had affronted him, as also at
their scribbler Enguerrant, more drivelling at the mouth than a mustard
pot. The jest and scorn thereof is not unlike to that of the mountain of
Horace, which by the poet was made to cry out and lament most enormously as
a woman in the pangs and labour of