at the limits and bounds of drinking
were when the cork of the shoes of him that drinketh swelleth up half
a foot high.

Then heavily mumbling a scurvy grace, he washed his hands in fresh
wine, picked his teeth with the foot of a pig, and talked jovially
with his attendants. Then the carpet being spread, they brought great
store of cards, dice, and chessboards.

After having well played, reveled, passed and spent his time, it was
proper to drink a little, and that was eleven goblets the man; and
immediately after making good cheer again, he would stretch himself
upon a fair bench, or a good large bed, and there sleep two or three
hours together without thinking or speaking any hurt. After he was
awakened he would shake his ears a little. In the mean time they
brought him fresh wine. Then he drank better than ever. Ponocrates
showed him that it was an ill diet to drink so after sleeping. "It
is," answered Gargantua, "the very life of the Fathers; for naturally
I sleep salt, and my sleep hath been to me instead of so much ham."

Then began he to study a little, and the paternosters first, which the
better and more formally to dispatch, he got up on an old mule which
had served nine kings; and so mumbling with his mouth, doddling his
head, would go see a coney caught in a net. At his return he went into
the kitchen to know what roast meat was on the spit; and supped very
well, upon my conscience, and commonly did invite some of his
neighbors that were good drinkers; with whom carousing, they told
stories of all sorts, from the old to the new. After supper were
brought in upon the place the fair wooden gospels--that is to say,
many pairs of tables and cards--with little small banquets, intermined
with collations and reer-suppers. Then did he sleep without unbridling
until eight o'clock in the next morning.

When Ponocrates knew Gargantua's vicious manner of living, he resolved
to bring him up in another kind; but for a while he bore with him,
considering that nature does not endure sudden changes without great
violence. Therefore, to begin his work the better, he requested a
learned physician of that time, called Maitre Theodorus, seriously to
perpend, if it were possible, how to bring Gargantua unto a better
course. The said physician purged him canonically with Anticyran
hellebore, by which medicine he cleansed all the alteration and
perverse habitude of his brain. By this means also Ponocrates made him
forget all th