other till it yielded a clashing noise, and that only
once. Again, in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards
four times in opening them. Then did he lay them joined, and extended the
one towards the other, as if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers
unto God. Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his right hand, and put
the thumb thereof into the nostril of the same side, holding his four
fingers straight out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point of
his nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making the other wink with a
profound depression of the eyebrows and eyelids. Then lifted he up his
left hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and
elevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly correspondent to the
situation of his right hand, with the distance of a cubit and a half
between them. This done, in the same form he abased towards the ground
about the one and the other hand. Lastly, he held them in the midst, as
aiming right at the Englishman's nose. And if Mercury,--said the
Englishman. There Panurge interrupted him, and said, You have spoken,
Mask.

Then made the Englishman this sign. His left hand all open he lifted up
into the air, then instantly shut into his fist the four fingers thereof,
and his thumb extended at length he placed upon the gristle of his nose.
Presently after, he lifted up his right hand all open, and all open abased
and bent it downwards, putting the thumb thereof in the very place where
the little finger of the left hand did close in the fist, and the four
right-hand fingers he softly moved in the air. Then contrarily he did with
the right hand what he had done with the left, and with the left what he
had done with the right.

Panurge, being not a whit amazed at this, drew out into the air his
trismegist codpiece with the left hand, and with his right drew forth a
truncheon of a white ox-rib, and two pieces of wood of a like form, one of
black ebony and the other of incarnation brasil, and put them betwixt the
fingers of that hand in good symmetry; then, knocking them together, made
such a noise as the lepers of Brittany use to do with their clappering
clickets, yet better resounding and far more harmonious, and with his
tongue contracted in his mouth did very merrily warble it, always looking
fixedly upon the Englishman. The divines, physicians, and chirurgeons that
were there thought that by this sign he would have