that great wine-press, which he readily did. As soon as we were in,
Epistemon, who understood all sorts of tongues, began to show us many
devices on the press, which was large and fine, and made of the wood of the
cross--at least Double-fee told us so. On each part of it were names of
everything in the language of the country. The spindle of the press was
called receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin,
state; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite
of homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats,
ignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place,
acquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the
pailes, potentials; the funnels, quietus est.

By the Queen of the Chitterlings, quoth Panurge, all the hieroglyphics of
Egypt are mine a-- to this jargon. Why! here are a parcel of words full as
analogous as chalk and cheese, or a cat and a cart-wheel! But why,
prithee, dear Double-fee, do they call these worshipful dons of yours
ignorant fellows? Only, said Double-fee, because they neither are, nor
ought to be, clerks, and all must be ignorant as to what they transact
here; nor is there to be any other reason given, but, The court hath said
it; The court will have it so; The court has decreed it. Cop's body, quoth
Pantagruel, they might full as well have called 'em necessity; for
necessity has no law.

From thence, as he was leading us to see a thousand little puny presses, we
spied another paltry bar, about which sat four are five ignorant waspish
churls, of so testy, fuming a temper, (like an ass with squibs and crackers
tied to its tail,) and so ready to take pepper in the nose for yea and nay,
that a dog would not have lived with 'em. They were hard at it with the
lees and dregs of the grapes, which they gripped over and over again, might
and main, with their clenched fists. They were called contractors in the
language of the country. These are the ugliest, misshapen, grim-looking
scrubs, said Friar John, that ever were beheld, with or without spectacles.
Then we passed by an infinite number of little pimping wine-presses all
full of vintage-mongers, who were picking, examining, and raking the grapes
with some instruments called bills-of-charge.

Finally we came into a hall downstairs, where we saw an overgrown cursed
mangy cur with a pair of heads, a wolf's belly, and claws like the devil of
h