he full half of a married
couple. How many times have I heard you say that the function of a
magistrate, or office of dignity, discovereth the merits, parts, and
endowments of the person so advanced and promoted, and what is in him.
That is to say, we are then best able to judge aright of the deservings of
a man when he is called to the management of affairs; for when before he
lived in a private condition, we could have no more certain knowledge of
him than of a bean within his husk. And thus stands the first article
explained; otherwise, could you imagine that the good fame, repute, and
estimation of an honest man should depend upon the tail of a whore?

Now to the meaning of the second article! My wife will be with child,
--here lies the prime felicity of marriage,--but not of me. Copsody, that I
do believe indeed! It will be of a pretty little infant. O how heartily I
shall love it! I do already dote upon it; for it will be my dainty feedle-
darling, my genteel dilly-minion. From thenceforth no vexation, care, or
grief shall take such deep impression in my heart, how hugely great or
vehement soever it otherwise appear, but that it shall evanish forthwith at
the sight of that my future babe, and at the hearing of the chat and
prating of its childish gibberish. And blessed be the old wife. By my
truly, I have a mind to settle some good revenue or pension upon her out of
the readiest increase of the lands of my Salmigondinois; not an inconstant
and uncertain rent-seek, like that of witless, giddy-headed bachelors, but
sure and fixed, of the nature of the well-paid incomes of regenting
doctors. If this interpretation doth not please you, think you my wife
will bear me in her flanks, conceive with me, and be of me delivered, as
women use in childbed to bring forth their young ones; so as that it may be
said, Panurge is a second Bacchus, he hath been twice born; he is re-born,
as was Hippolytus,--as was Proteus, one time of Thetis, and secondly, of
the mother of the philosopher Apollonius,--as were the two Palici, near the
flood Simaethos in Sicily. His wife was big of child with him. In him is
renewed and begun again the palintocy of the Megarians and the palingenesy
of Democritus. Fie upon such errors! To hear stuff of that nature rends
mine ears.

The words of the third article are: She will suck me at my best end. Why
not? That pleaseth me right well. You know the thing; I need not tell you
that it