in the
monastery of Fontaine le Comte, under the noble Abbot Ardillon. Gymnast
likewise affirmed that he was in the tent of the grand Christian cavalier
De Crissie, when the Gascon, after his sleep, made answer to the
adventurer. Panurge was somewhat incredulous in the matter of believing
that it was morally possible Bridlegoose should have been for such a long
space of time so continually fortunate in that aleatory way of deciding law
debates. Epistemon said to Pantagruel, Such another story, not much unlike
to that in all the circumstances thereof, is vulgarly reported of the
provost of Montlehery. In good sooth, such a perpetuity of good luck is to
be wondered at. To have hit right twice or thrice in a judgment so given
by haphazard might have fallen out well enough, especially in controversies
that were ambiguous, intricate, abstruse, perplexed, and obscure.

Chapter 3.XLIV.

How Pantagruel relateth a strange history of the perplexity of human
judgment.

Seeing you talk, quoth Pantagruel, of dark, difficult, hard, and knotty
debates, I will tell you of one controverted before Cneius Dolabella,
proconsul in Asia. The case was this.

A wife in Smyrna had of her first husband a child named Abece. He dying,
she, after the expiring of a year and day, married again, and to her second
husband bore a boy called Effege. A pretty long time thereafter it
happened, as you know the affection of stepfathers and stepdams is very
rare towards the children of the first fathers and mothers deceased, that
this husband, with the help of his son Effege, secretly, wittingly,
willingly, and treacherously murdered Abece. The woman came no sooner to
get information of the fact, but, that it might not go unpunished, she
caused kill them both, to revenge the death of her first son. She was
apprehended and carried before Cneius Dolabella, in whose presence she,
without dissembling anything, confessed all that was laid to her charge;
yet alleged that she had both right and reason on her side for the killing
of them. Thus was the state of the question. He found the business so
dubious and intricate, that he knew not what to determine therein, nor
which of the parties to incline to. On the one hand, it was an execrable
crime to cut off at once both her second husband and her son. On the other
hand, the cause of the murder seemed to be so natural, as to be grounded
upon the law of nations and the rational instinct of all the p