rbles are fine; I say
nothing to the contrary; but our cheesecakes at Amiens are far better in my
mind. These ancient statues are well made; I am willing to believe it;
but, by St. Ferreol of Abbeville, we have young wenches in our country
which please me better a thousand times.

What is the reason, asked Friar John, that monks are always to be found in
kitchens, and kings, emperors, and popes are never there? Is there not,
said Rhizotome, some latent virtue and specific propriety hid in the
kettles and pans, which, as the loadstone attracts iron, draws the monks
there, and cannot attract emperors, popes, or kings? Or is it a natural
induction and inclination, fixed in the frocks and cowls, which of itself
leads and forceth those good religious men into kitchens, whether they will
or no? He would speak of forms following matter, as Averroes calls them,
answered Epistemon. Right, said Friar John.

I will not offer to solve this problem, said Pantagruel; for it is somewhat
ticklish, and you can hardly handle it without coming off scurvily; but I
will tell you what I have heard.

Antigonus, King of Macedon, one day coming into one of the tents, where his
cooks used to dress his meat, and finding there poet Antagoras frying a
conger, and holding the pan himself, merrily asked him, Pray, Mr. Poet, was
Homer frying congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon? Antagoras
readily answered: But do you think, sir, that when Agamemnon did them he
made it his business to know if any in his camp were frying congers? The
king thought it an indecency that a poet should be thus a-frying in a
kitchen; and the poet let the king know that it was a more indecent thing
for a king to be found in such a place. I'll clap another story upon the
neck of this, quoth Panurge, and will tell you what Breton Villandry
answered one day to the Duke of Guise.

They were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had n