hat they would, because before they did not what they might have done: Ex
desuetudine amittuntur privilegia. Non-usage oftentimes destroys one's
right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain
as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic
people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal
labouring. Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen,
idly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their
livelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches. Nay truly,
answered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for
thou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business,
without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary
reservations. Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated
all the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did
intimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to
thee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou
hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,--in that point there
shall be no failing, I promise thee,--and shall have always by me pretty
girls clothed with the name of my wife's waiting-maids, that, lying under
thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.

Let this serve for the first part of the sermon. Hearken, quoth Friar
John, to the oracle of the bells of Varenes. What say they? I hear and
understand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by my thirst, more
uprightly fatidical than that of Jove's great kettles in Dodona. Hearken!
Take thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry; for if thou
marry, thou shalt find good therein, herein, here in a wife thou shalt find
good; so marry, marry. I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the
elements invite and prompt me to it. Let this word be to thee a brazen
wall, by diffidence not to be broken through. As for the second part of
this our doctrine,--thou seemest in some measure to mistrust the readiness
of my paternity in the practising of my placket-racket within the
Aphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if the stiff god of
gardens were not favourable to me. I pray thee, favour me so much as to
believe that I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments,
docile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things and everywhe