your
old age would enslave yourself to the bondage of matrimony, and shut your
pleasures up within a wedlock whose key some ruffian carries in his
codpiece. He says furthermore, Beware of the monk. Upon mine honour, it
gives me in my mind that you will be cuckolded by a monk. Nay, I will
engage mine honour, which is the most precious pawn I could have in my
possession although I were sole and peaceable dominator over all Europe,
Asia, and Africa, that, if you marry, you will surely be one of the horned
brotherhood of Vulcan. Hereby may you perceive how much I do attribute to
the wise foolery of our morosoph Triboulet. The other oracles and
responses did in the general prognosticate you a cuckold, without
descending so near to the point of a particular determination as to pitch
upon what vocation amongst the several sorts of men he should profess who
is to be the copesmate of your wife and hornifier of your proper self.
Thus noble Triboulet tells it us plainly, from whose words we may gather
with all ease imaginable that your cuckoldry is to be infamous, and so much
the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously
contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says
that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned,
hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the
Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes
of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for
another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,
and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud,
obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay
hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder,
and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the
back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and
fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as
you stole the hog's bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.

Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;--not that I would impudently exempt myself
from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that
jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not?
For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou,
all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that
inf