an that of his times; the rectors of colleges could
not pretend that Pantagruel, who was hardly born before he sucked down at
every meal the milk of four thousand six hundred cows, and for whose
first shirt there had been cut nine hundred ells of Chatellerault linen,
was a portrait of any of the little boys who trembled at their ferules.
. . . Pantagruel is in his cradle; he is bound and swathed in it like
all children at that time; but, ere long, Gargantua, his father,
perceives that these bands are constraining his movements, and that he is
making efforts to burst there; he immediately, by advice of the princes
and lords present, orders the said shackles to be undone, and lo!
Pantagruel is no longer uneasy. . . . And thus became he big and
strong full early. . . . There came, however, the time when his
instruction must begin. 'My will,' said Gargantua, 'is to hand him over
to some learned man for to indoctrinate him according to his capacity,
and to spare nothing to that end.' He, accordingly, put Pantagruel under
a great teacher, who began by bringing him up after the fashion of those
times. He taught him his charte (alphabet) to such purpose that he could
say it by heart backwards, and he was five years and three months about
it. Then he read with him Donotus and Facetus (old elementary works on
Latin grammar), and he was thirteen years, six months, and two weeks over
that. Then he read with him the De Modis significandi, with the
commentaries of Hurtebisius, Fasquin, and a heap of others, and he was
more than eighteen years and eleven months over them, and knew them so
well that he proved on his fingers to his mother that _de modis
signifieandi non erat scientia_. After so much labor and so many years,
what did Pantagruel know? Gargantua was no bigot: he did not shut his
eyes that he might not see, and he believed what his eyes told him. He
saw that Pantagruel worked very hard and spent all his time at it, and
yet he got no good by it. And what was worse, he was becoming daft,
silly, dreamy, and besotted through it. So Pantagruel was taken away
from his former masters and handed over to Ponocrates, a teacher of quite
a different sort, who was bidden to take him to Paris to make a new
creature of him and complete his education there. Ponocrates was very
careful not to send him to any college. Rabelais, as it appears, had a
special aversion for Montaigu College. 'Tempeste,' says he, 'was a great
b