he great
after-supper chess-tournament with living pieces, and the "invisible
disparition" of the lady, and the departure of the fortunate visitors
themselves, duly inscribed and registered as Abstractors of
Quintessence. The whole is like a good dream, and is told so as almost
to be one.

Between this and the final goal of the Country of Lanterns the interest
falls a little. The island of "Odes" (not "poems" but "ways"), where the
"walks walk" (_les chemins cheminent_); that of "Esclots" ("clogs"),
where dwell the Freres Fredonnants, and where the attack on monkery is
renewed in a rather unsavoury and rather puerile fashion; and that of
Satin, which is a sort of Medamothi rehandled, are not first-rate--they
would have been done better, or cut out, had the book ever been issued
by Master Francis. But the arrival at and the sojourn in Lanternia
itself recovers the full powers of Rabelais at his best, though one may
once more think that some of the treatment might have been altered in
the case just mentioned.

[Sidenote: The conclusion and The Bottle.]

Apart from the usual mixture of serious and purely jocular satire, of
learning and licence, of jargonic catalogues, of local references to
Western France and the general topography of Utopia, this conclusion
consists of two main parts--first, a most elaborate description of the
Temple, containing underground the Oracle of the Bottle, to which the
pilgrims are conducted by a select "Lantern," and of its priestess
Bacbuc, its _adytum_ with a fountain, and, in the depth and centre of
all, the sacred Bottle itself; and secondly, the ceremonies of the
delivery of the Oracle; the divine utterance, _Trinq!_ its
interpretation by Bacbuc; the very much _ad libitum_ reinterpretations
of the interpretation by Panurge and Friar John, and the dismissal of
the pilgrims by the priestess, _Or allez de par Dieu, qui vous
conduise!_[107]

* * * * *

What, it may be asked, is the object of this cumbrous analysis of
certainly one of the most famous and (as it at least should be) one of
the best known books of the world? That object has been partly indicated
already; but it may be permissible to set it forth more particularly
before ending this chapter. Of the importance, on the one hand, of the
acquisition by the novel of the greatest known and individual writer of
French up to his date, and of the enormous popularity of this example of
it, enough may hav