ass without a
crupper, and making a noise like a cow without cymbals. A certain
latinisator, dwelling near the hospital, said since, producing the
authority of one Taponnus,--I lie, it was one Pontanus the secular poet,
--who wished those bells had been made of feathers, and the clapper of a
foxtail, to the end they might have begot a chronicle in the bowels of his
brain, when he was about the composing of his carminiformal lines. But nac
petetin petetac, tic, torche lorgne, or rot kipipur kipipot put pantse
malf, he was declared an heretic. We make them as of wax. And no more
saith the deponent. Valete et plaudite. Calepinus recensui.

Chapter 1.XX.

How the Sophister carried away his cloth, and how he had a suit in law
against the other masters.

The sophister had no sooner ended, but Ponocrates and Eudemon burst out in
a laughing so heartily, that they had almost split with it, and given up
the ghost, in rendering their souls to God: even just as Crassus did,
seeing a lubberly ass eat thistles; and as Philemon, who, for seeing an ass
eat those figs which were provided for his own dinner, died with force of
laughing. Together with them Master Janotus fell a-laughing too as fast as
he could, in which mood of laughing they continued so long, that their eyes
did water by the vehement concussion of the substance of the brain, by
which these lachrymal humidities, being pressed out, glided through the
optic nerves, and so to the full represented Democritus Heraclitizing and
Heraclitus Democritizing.

When they had done laughing, Gargantua consulted with the prime of his
retinue what should be done. There Ponocrates was of opinion that they
should make this fair orator drink again; and seeing he had showed them
more pastime, and made them laugh more than a natural soul could have done,
that they should give him ten baskets full of sausages, mentioned in his
pleasant speech, with a pair of hose, three hundred great billets of
logwood, five-and-twenty hogsheads of wine, a good large down-bed, and a
deep capacious dish, which he said were necessary for his old age. All
this was done as they did appoint: only Gargantua, doubting that they
could not quickly find out breeches fit for his wearing, because he knew
not what fashion would best become the said orator, whether the martingale
fashion of breeches, wherein is a spunghole with a drawbridge for the more
easy caguing: or the fashion of the mariners, for the