ren are born in October and November than in the
other ten months of the year, and reckoning backwards 'twill be easily
found that they were all made, conceived, and begotten in Lent.

I listen to you with both my ears, quoth Friar John, and that with no small
pleasure, I'll assure you. But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert
ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food
that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers,
your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father
confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that
run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell. So
the silly cod's-headed brothers of the noose dare not then stumble any more
at the truckle-bed, to the no small discomfort of their maids, and are even
forced, poor souls, to take up with their own bodily wives. Dixi; I have
done.

You may descant on the institution of Lent as much as you please, cried
Epistemon; so many men so many minds; but certainly all the physicians will
be against its being suppressed, though I think that time is at hand. I
know they will, and have heard 'em say were it not for Lent their art would
soon fall into contempt, and they'd get nothing, for hardly anybody would
be sick.

All distempers are sowed in lent; 'tis the true seminary and native bed of
all diseases; nor does it only weaken and putrefy bodies, but it also makes
souls mad and uneasy. For then the devils do their best, and drive a
subtle trade, and the tribe of canting dissemblers come out of their holes.
'Tis then term-time with your cucullated pieces of formality that have one
face to God and another to the devil; and a wretched clutter they make with
their sessions, stations, pardons, syntereses, confessions, whippings,
anathematizations, and much prayer with as little devotion. However, I'll
not offer to infer from this that the Arimaspians are better than we are in
that point; yet I speak to the purpose.

Well, quoth Panurge to the Semiquaver friar, who happened to be by, dear
bumbasting, shaking, trilling, quavering cod, what thinkest thou of this
fellow? Is he a rank heretic? Fri. Much.

Pan. Ought he not to be singed? Fri. Well.

Pan. As soon as may be? Fri. Right.

Pan. Should not he be scalded first? Fri. No.

Pan. How then, should he be roasted? Fri. Quick.

Pan. Till at last he be? Fri. Dead.

Pan.