ference of wafts and smells, but merely a
various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the
diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it. Nevertheless, if
you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's
balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that
they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like
nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check
and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the
solid truth.

I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this
dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean
and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living
chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range,
and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient,
submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason. Therefore here will I
make an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the
said animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented
or satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the
epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered
motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly
longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging
lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.
For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual
danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not
wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious
animal. Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your
medicinal art for hindering one's head to be horny-graffed at home whilst
his feet are plodding abroad? Yes, that I have, my gallant friend,
answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I
frequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set
down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a
standing of two thousand years. Hearken and take good heed. You are,
quoth Panurge, by cockshobby, a right honest man, and I love you with all
my heart. Eat a little of this quince-pie; it is very proper and
convenient for the shutting up of the orifice of the ventricle of the
stomach, because