rgantua had most affably saluted all the gentlemen there present, he
said, Good friends, I beg this favour of you, and therein you will very
much oblige me, that you leave not the places where you sate nor quit the
discourse you were upon. Let a chair be brought hither unto this end of
the table, and reach me a cupful of the strongest and best wine you have,
that I may drink to all the company. You are, in faith, all welcome,
gentlemen. Now let me know what talk you were about. To this Pantagruel
answered that at the beginning of the second service Panurge had proposed a
problematic theme, to wit, whether he should marry, or not marry? that
Father Hippothadee and Doctor Rondibilis had already despatched their
resolutions thereupon; and that, just as his majesty was coming in, the
faithful Trouillogan in the delivery of his opinion hath thus far
proceeded, that when Panurge asked whether he ought to marry, yea or no? at
first he made this answer, Both together. When this same question was
again propounded, his second answer was, Neither the one nor the other.
Panurge exclaimeth that those answers are full of repugnancies and
contradictions, protesting that he understands them not, nor what it is
that can be meant by them. If I be not mistaken, quoth Gargantua, I
understand it very well. The answer is not unlike to that which was once
made by a philosopher in ancient times, who being interrogated if he had a
woman whom they named him to his wife? I have her, quoth he, but she hath
not me,--possessing her, by her I am not possessed. Such another answer,
quoth Pantagruel, was once made by a certain bouncing wench of Sparta, who
being asked if at any time she had had to do with a man? No, quoth she, but
sometimes men have had to do with me. Well then, quoth Rondibilis, let it
be a neuter in physic, as when we say a body is neuter, when it is neither
sick nor healthful, and a mean in philosophy; that, by an abnegation of
both extremes, and this by the participation of the one and of the other.
Even as when lukewarm water is said to be both hot and cold; or rather, as
when time makes the partition, and equally divides betwixt the two, a while
in the one, another while as long in the other opposite extremity. The
holy Apostle, quoth Hippothadee, seemeth, as I conceive, to have more
clearly explained this point when he said, Those that are married, let them
be as if they were not married; and those that have wives, let th