at was in the oven was to be drawn, that they might have their
turns, and in a mighty haste they were pulling and hauling the man like
mad, telling him that 'tis the most grievous and intolerable thing in
nature for the tail to be on fire and the head to scare away those who
should quench it.

The officer had his hands full, never wanting patients; neither did his
place bring him in little, you may swear. Pantagruel asked him whether he
could also make old men young again. He said he could not. But the way to
make them new men was to get 'em to cohabit with a new-cast female; for
this they caught that fifth kind of crinckams, which some call pellade, in
Greek, ophiasis, that makes them cast off their old hair and skin, just as
the serpents do, and thus their youth is renewed like the Arabian
phoenix's. This is the true fountain of youth, for there the old and
decrepit become young, active, and lusty.

Just so, as Euripides tells us, Iolaus was transmogrified; and thus Phaon,
for whom kind-hearted Sappho run wild, grew young again, for Venus's use;
so Tithon by Aurora's means; so Aeson by Medea, and Jason also, who, if
you'll believe Pherecides and Simonides, was new-vamped and dyed by that
witch; and so were the nurses of jolly Bacchus, and their husbands, as
Aeschylus relates.

Chapter 5.XXII.

How Queen Whims' officers were employed; and how the said lady retained us
among her abstractors.

I then saw a great number of the queen's officers, who made blackamoors
white as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a
pannier.

Others, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore,
and did not lose their seed.

Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.

Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a
mortar, and changed their substance.

Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.

Others gathered barberries and figs off of thistles.

Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk in a sieve; and
much they got by it.

(Others washed asses' heads without losing their soap.)

Others taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.

Others pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.

I saw a spodizator, who very artificially got farts out of a dead ass, and
sold 'em for fivepence an ell.

Another did putrefy beetles. O the dainty food!

Poor Panurge fairly cast up his ac