ing along
with him from Blois the fool Triboulet. Then was Carpalin instantly sent
away, and Pantagruel, at the same time attended by his domestics, Panurge,
Epistemon, Ponocrates, Friar John, Gymnast, Ryzotomus, and others, marched
forward on the high road to Mirelingues.

Chapter 3.XXXIX.

How Pantagruel was present at the trial of Judge Bridlegoose, who decided
causes and controversies in law by the chance and fortune of the dice.

On the day following, precisely at the hour appointed, Pantagruel came to
Mirelingues. At his arrival the presidents, senators, and counsellors
prayed him to do them the honour to enter in with them, to hear the
decision of all the causes, arguments, and reasons which Bridlegoose in his
own defence would produce, why he had pronounced a certain sentence against
the subsidy-assessor, Toucheronde, which did not seem very equitable to
that centumviral court. Pantagruel very willingly condescended to their
desire, and accordingly entering in, found Bridlegoose sitting within the
middle of the enclosure of the said court of justice; who immediately upon
the coming of Pantagruel, accompanied with the senatorian members of that
worshipful judicatory, arose, went to the bar, had his indictment read, and
for all his reasons, defences, and excuses, answered nothing else but that
he was become old, and that his sight of late was very much failed, and
become dimmer than it was wont to be; instancing therewithal many miseries
and calamities which old age bringeth along with it, and are concomitant to
wrinkled elders; which not. per Archid. d. lxxxvi. c. tanta. By reason of
which infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the
points and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do;
whence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac
took Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of
causes and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a
quatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce. This I beseech your worships,
quoth he, to take into your serious consideration, and to have the more
favourable opinion of my uprightness, notwithstanding the prevarication
whereof I am accused in the matter of Toucheronde's sentence, that at the
time of that decree's pronouncing I only had made use of my small dice; and
your worships, said he, know very well how by the most authentic rules of
the law it is provided that the i