of poor Pantagruel, who was left a reculorum,
behindhand, all alone, and as forsaken. What did he? Hark what he did,
good people. He strove and essayed to break the chains of the cradle with
his arms, but could not, for they were too strong for him. Then did he
keep with his feet such a stamping stir, and so long, that at last he beat
out the lower end of his cradle, which notwithstanding was made of a great
post five foot in square; and as soon as he had gotten out his feet, he
slid down as well as he could till he had got his soles to the ground, and
then with a mighty force he rose up, carrying his cradle upon his back,
bound to him like a tortoise that crawls up against a wall; and to have
seen him, you would have thought it had been a great carrick of five
hundred tons upon one end. In this manner he entered into the great hall
where they were banqueting, and that very boldly, which did much affright
the company; yet, because his arms were tied in, he could not reach
anything to eat, but with great pain stooped now and then a little to take
with the whole flat of his tongue some lick, good bit, or morsel. Which
when his father saw, he knew well enough that they had left him without
giving him anything to eat, and therefore commanded that he should be
loosed from the said chains, by the counsel of the princes and lords there
present. Besides that also the physicians of Gargantua said that, if they
did thus keep him in the cradle, he would be all his lifetime subject to
the stone. When he was unchained, they made him to sit down, where, after
he had fed very well, he took his cradle and broke it into more than five
hundred thousand pieces with one blow of his fist that he struck in the
midst of it, swearing that he would never come into it again.

Chapter 2.V.

Of the acts of the noble Pantagruel in his youthful age.

Thus grew Pantagruel from day to day, and to everyone's eye waxed more and
more in all his dimensions, which made his father to rejoice by a natural
affection. Therefore caused he to be made for him, whilst he was yet
little, a pretty crossbow wherewith to shoot at small birds, which now they
call the great crossbow at Chantelle. Then he sent him to the school to
learn, and to spend his youth in virtue. In the prosecution of which
design he came first to Poictiers, where, as he studied and profited very
much, he saw that the scholars were oftentimes at leisure and knew not how
to bestow