on them, may perhaps fail to find in it
either the cleverest or the most amusing part of the voyage. The episode
of the next Isle--that _des Ferrements_--is obscure, whether it is or is
not (as the commentators were sure to suggest) something else beginning
with "obsc-," and the succeeding one, with its rocks fashioned like
gigantic dice, is not very amusing. But the terrible country of the
_Chats Fourres_ and their chief Grippeminaud--an attack on the Law as
unsparing as, and much more vivid than that on the Church in the
overture--may rank with the best things in Rabelais. The tyrant's
ferocious and double-meaning catchword of _Or ca!_ and the power at his
back, which even Pantagruel thinks it better rather to run away from
than to fight openly, which Panurge frankly bribes, and over which even
the reckless and invincible Friar John obtains not much triumph, except
that of cutting up, after buying it, an old woman's bed--these and the
rest have a grim humour not quite like anything else.

[Sidenote: "La Quinte."]

The next section--that of the Apedeftes or Uneducated Ones[106]--has
been a special object of suspicion; it is certainly a little difficult,
and perhaps a little dull. One is not sorry when the explorers, in the
ambiguous way already noted, "_passent_ _Oultre_," and, after
difficulties with the wind, come to "the kingdom of Quintessence, named
Entelechy." Something has been said more than once of this already, and
it is perhaps unnecessary to say more, or indeed anything, except to
those who themselves "hold of La Quinte," and who for that very reason
require no talking about her. "We" (if one may enrol oneself in their
company) would almost rather give up Rabelais altogether than sacrifice
this delightful episode, and abandon the idea of having the ladies of
the Queen for our partners in Emmelie, and Calabrisme, and the thousand
other dances, of watching the wonderful cures by music, and the
interesting process of throwing, not the house out of the window, but
the window out of the house, and the miraculous and satisfactory
transformation of old ladies into young girls, with very slight
alteration of their former youthful selves, and all the charming
topsyturvifications of Entelechy. Not to mention the gracious if
slightly unintelligible speeches of the exquisite princess, when clear
Hesperus shone once more, and her supper of pure nectar and ambrosia
(not grudging more solid viands to her visitors), and t