these sound advices, so by honouring and following them did they prove no
less fortunate in the happy success of all their endeavours. Witness the
old wife Aurinia, and the good mother Velled, in the days of Vespasian.
You need not any way doubt but that feminine old age is always fructifying
in qualities sublime--I would have said sibylline. Let us go, by the help,
let us go, by the virtue of God, let us go. Farewell, Friar John, I
recommend the care of my codpiece to you. Well, quoth Epistemon, I will
follow you, with this protestation nevertheless, that if I happen to get a
sure information, or otherwise find that she doth use any kind of charm or
enchantment in her responses, it may not be imputed to me for a blame to
leave you at the gate of her house, without accompanying you any further
in.

Chapter 3.XVII.

How Panurge spoke to the Sibyl of Panzoust.

Their voyage was three days journeying. On the third whereof was shown
unto them the house of the vaticinatress standing on the knap or top of a
hill, under a large and spacious walnut-tree. Without great difficulty
they entered into that straw-thatched cottage, scurvily built, naughtily
movabled, and all besmoked. It matters not, quoth Epistemon; Heraclitus,
the grand Scotist and tenebrous darksome philosopher, was nothing
astonished at his introit into such a coarse and paltry habitation; for he
did usually show forth unto his sectators and disciples that the gods made
as cheerfully their residence in these mean homely mansions as in sumptuous
magnific palaces, replenished with all manner of delight, pomp, and
pleasure. I withal do really believe that the dwelling-place of the so
famous and renowned Hecate was just such another petty cell as this is,
when she made a feast therein to the valiant Theseus; and that of no other
better structure was the cot or cabin of Hyreus, or Oenopion, wherein
Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury were not ashamed, all three together, to
harbour and sojourn a whole night, and there to take a full and hearty
repast; for the payment of the shot they thankfully pissed Orion. They
finding the ancient woman at a corner of her own chimney, Epistemon said,
She is indeed a true sibyl, and the lively portrait of one represented by
the Grei kaminoi of Homer. The old hag was in a pitiful bad plight and
condition in matter of the outward state and complexion of her body, the
ragged and tattered equipage of her person in the point of ac