.

Ponocrates showed him that he ought not to eat so soon after rising
out of his bed, unless he had performed some exercise beforehand.
Gargantua answered: "What! have not I sufficiently well exercised
myself? I rolled myself six or seven turns in my bed before I rose. Is
not that enough? Pope Alexander did so, by the advice of a Jew, his
physician; and lived till his dying day in despite of the envious. My
first masters have used me to it, saying that breakfast makes a good
memory; wherefore they drank first. I am very well after it, and dine
but the better. And Maitre Tubal, who was the first licentiate at
Paris, told me that it is not everything to run a pace, but to set
forth well betimes: so doth not the total welfare of our humanity
depend upon perpetual drinking _atas_, _atas_, like ducks, but on
drinking well in the morning; whence the verse----

"'To rise betimes is no good hour,
To drink betimes is better sure.'"

After he had thoroughly broken his fast, he went to church; and they
carried for him, in a great basket, a huge breviary. There he heard
six-and-twenty or thirty masses. This while, to the same place came
his sayer of hours, lapped up about the chin like a tufted whoop, and
his breath perfumed with good store of sirup. With him he mumbled all
his kyriels, which he so curiously picked that there fell not so much
as one grain to the ground. As he went from the church, they brought
him, upon a dray drawn by oxen, a heap of paternosters of Sanct
Claude, every one of them being of the bigness of a hat-block; and
thus walking through the cloisters, galleries, or garden, he said more
in turning them over than sixteen hermits would have done. Then did he
study for some paltry half-hour with his eyes fixt upon his book; but
as the comic saith, his mind was in the kitchen. Then he sat down at
table; and because he was naturally phlegmatic, he began his meal with
some dozens of hams, dried meats' tongues, mullet's roe, chitterlings,
and such other forerunners of wine.

In the meanwhile, four of his folks did cast into his mouth, one after
another continually, mustard by whole shovelfuls. Immediately after
that he drank a horrific draft of white wine for the ease of his
kidneys. When that was done, he ate according to the season meat
agreeable to his appetite, and then left off eating when he was like
to crack for fulness. As for his drinking, he had neither end nor
rule. For he was wont to say, th