thou not take me away before
her, seeing for me to live without her is but to languish? Ah, Badebec,
Badebec, my minion, my dear heart, my sugar, my sweeting, my honey, my
little c-- (yet it had in circumference full six acres, three rods, five
poles, four yards, two foot, one inch and a half of good woodland measure),
my tender peggy, my codpiece darling, my bob and hit, my slipshoe-lovey,
never shall I see thee! Ah, poor Pantagruel, thou hast lost thy good
mother, thy sweet nurse, thy well-beloved lady! O false death, how
injurious and despiteful hast thou been to me! How malicious and
outrageous have I found thee in taking her from me, my well-beloved wife,
to whom immortality did of right belong!

With these words he did cry like a cow, but on a sudden fell a-laughing
like a calf, when Pantagruel came into his mind. Ha, my little son, said
he, my childilolly, fedlifondy, dandlichucky, my ballocky, my pretty rogue!
O how jolly thou art, and how much am I bound to my gracious God, that hath
been pleased to bestow on me a son so fair, so spriteful, so lively, so
smiling, so pleasant, and so gentle! Ho, ho, ho, ho, how glad I am! Let
us drink, ho, and put away melancholy! Bring of the best, rinse the
glasses, lay the cloth, drive out these dogs, blow this fire, light
candles, shut that door there, cut this bread in sippets for brewis, send
away these poor folks in giving them what they ask, hold my gown. I will
strip myself into my doublet (en cuerpo), to make the gossips merry, and
keep them company.

As he spake this, he heard the litanies and the mementos of the priests
that carried his wife to be buried, upon which he left the good purpose he
was in, and was suddenly ravished another way, saying, Lord God! must I
again contrist myself? This grieves me. I am no longer young, I grow old,
the weather is dangerous; I may perhaps take an ague, then shall I be
foiled, if not quite undone. By the faith of a gentleman, it were better
to cry less, and drink more. My wife is dead, well, by G--! (da jurandi) I
shall not raise her again by my crying: she is well, she is in paradise at
least, if she be no higher: she prayeth to God for us, she is happy, she
is above the sense of our miseries, nor can our calamities reach her. What
though she be dead, must not we also die? The same debt which she hath
paid hangs over our heads; nature will require it of us, and we must all of
us some day taste of the same sauce.