up with contemplating those things, Let us go
further, sir, said he to him; all this is nothing yet. Nothing, quotha,
cried Friar John; by the soul of my overheated codpiece, friend Panurge and
I here shake and quiver for mere hunger. I had rather be drinking than
staring at these ruins. Pray come along, sir, said Double-fee. He then
led us into a little wine-press that lay backwards in a blind corner, and
was called Pithies in the language of the country. You need not ask
whether Master John and Panurge made much of their sweet selves there; it
is enough that I tell you there was no want of Bolognia sausages, turkey
poots, capons, bustards, malmsey, and all other sorts of good belly-timber,
very well dressed.

A pimping son of ten fathers, who, for want of a better, did the office of
a butler, seeing that Friar John had cast a sheep's eye at a choice bottle
that stood near a cupboard by itself, at some distance from the rest of the
bottellic magazine, like a jack-in-an-office said to Pantagruel, Sir, I
perceive that one of your men here is making love to this bottle. He ogles
it, and would fain caress it; but I beg that none offer to meddle with it;
for it is reserved for their worships. How, cried Panurge, there are some
grandees here then, I see. It is vintage time with you, I perceive.

Then Double-fee led us up to a private staircase, and showed us into a
room, whence, without being seen, out at a loophole we could see their
worships in the great wine-press, where none could be admitted without
their leave. Their worships, as he called them, were about a score of
fusty crack-ropes and gallow-clappers, or rather more, all posted before a
bar, and staring at each other like so many dead pigs. Their paws were as
long as a crane's foot, and their claws four-and-twenty inches long at
least; for you must know they are enjoined never to pare off the least chip
of them, so that they grow as crooked as a Welsh hook or a hedging-bill.

We saw a swingeing bunch of grapes that are gathered and squeezed in that
country, brought in by them. As soon as it was laid down, they clapped it
into the press, and there was not a bit of it out of which each of them did
not squeeze some oil of gold; insomuch that the poor grape was tried with a
witness, and brought off so drained and picked, and so dry, that there was
not the least moisture, juice, or substance left in it; for they had
pressed out its very quintessence.

Doubl