upon this kind of fortune-flinging proof infer an uncontrollable and
not to be gainsaid infallibility of truth.

Chapter 3.XI.

How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one's fortune by the throwing of dice
to be unlawful.

It would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should
try the matter at the chance of three fair dice. Quoth Pantagruel, That
sort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly
scandalous. Never trust in it. The accursed book of the Recreation of
Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that
ancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue
or massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several
places of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his
snares. You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his
kingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts
thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it
out of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any
well-polished state or commonwealth. What I have told you of dice, I say
the same of the play at cockall. It is a lottery of the like guile and
deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in
opposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast
of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These
are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the
foolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.

Nevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you
throw three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the
blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that
page which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.

Have you any dice in your pocket? A whole bagful, answered Panurge. That
is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.
2. De Patria Diabolorum. The devil would be sure to take me napping, and
very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice. With this, the
three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the
lower points that the cast was five, six, and five. These are, quoth
Panurge, sixteen in all. Let us take the sixteenth line of the page. The
number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy