had midst all the
waves and boisterous billows which a stormy cloud in a cross fortune would
raise up against him. Honest Pantagruel, not understanding the mystery,
asked him, by way of interrogatory, what he did intend to personate in that
new-fangled prosopopoeia. I have, answered Panurge, a flea in mine ear,
and have a mind to marry. In a good time, quoth Pantagruel, you have told
me joyful tidings. Yet would not I hold a red-hot iron in my hand for all
the gladness of them. But it is not the fashion of lovers to be accoutred
in such dangling vestments, so as to have their shirts flagging down over
their knees, without breeches, and with a long robe of a dark brown mingled
hue, which is a colour never used in Talarian garments amongst any persons
of honour, quality, or virtue. If some heretical persons and schismatical
sectaries have at any time formerly been so arrayed and clothed (though
many have imputed such a kind of dress to cosenage, cheat, imposture, and
an affectation of tyranny upon credulous minds of the rude multitude), I
will nevertheless not blame them for it, nor in that point judge rashly or
sinistrously of them. Everyone overflowingly aboundeth in his own sense
and fancy; yea, in things of a foreign consideration, altogether
extrinsical and indifferent, which in and of themselves are neither
commendable nor bad, because they proceed not from the interior of the
thoughts and heart, which is the shop of all good and evil; of goodness, if
it be upright, and that its affections be regulated by the pure and clean
spirit of righteousness; and, on the other side, of wickedness, if its
inclinations, straying beyond the bounds of equity, be corrupted and
depraved by the malice and suggestions of the devil. It is only the
novelty and new-fangledness thereof which I dislike, together with the
contempt of common custom and the fashion which is in use.

The colour, answered Panurge, is convenient, for it is conform to that
of my council-board carpet; therefore will I henceforth hold me with it,
and more narrowly and circumspectly than ever hitherto I have done look to
my affairs and business. Seeing I am once out of debt, you never yet saw
man more unpleasing than I will be, if God help me not. Lo, here be my
spectacles. To see me afar off, you would readily say that it were Friar
(John) Burgess. I believe certainly that in the next ensuing year I shall
once more preach the Crusade. Bounce, buckram.