bath from the turrets of Notre Dame, so he added--

"If you are in a good humour, sire, I can regale you with a capital
little sermon, always appropriate, and which I have kept under the
tympanum of my left ear in order to deliver it in a fit place, by way
of an aulic parable."

"Gentlemen," said the king, "Master Francis Rabelais has the floor of
the court, and our salvation is concerned in his speech. Be silent, I
pray you, and give heed; he is fruitful in evangelical drolleries."

"Sire," said the good vicar, "I commence."

All the courtiers became silent, and arranged themselves into a
circle, pliant as osiers before the father of Pantagruel who unfolded
to them the following tale, in words the illustrious eloquence of
which it is impossible to equal. But since this tale has only been
verbally handed down to us, the author will be pardoned if he write
after his own fashion.

"In his old age Gargantua took to strange habits, which greatly
astonished his household, but the which he was forgiven since he was
seven hundred and four years old, in spite of the statement of St.
Clement of Alexandra in his Stromates, which makes out that at this
time he was a quarter of a day less, which matters little to us. Now
this paternal master, seeing that everything was going wrong in his
house, and that every one was fleecing him, conceived a great fear
that he would in his last moments be stripped of everything, and
resolved to invent a more perfect system of management in his domains,
and he did well. In a cellar of Gargantuan abode he hid away a fine
heap of red wheat, beside twenty jars of mustard and several
delicacies, such as plums and Tourainian rolls, articles of a dessert,
Olivet cheese, goat cheese, and others, well known between Langeais
and Loches, pots of butter, hare pasties, preserved ducks, pigs'
trotters in bran, boatloads and pots full of crushed peas, pretty
little pots of Orleans quince preserve, hogsheads of lampreys,
measures of green sauce, river game, such as francolins, teal,
sheldrake, heron, and flamingo, all preserved in sea-salt, dried
raisins, tongues smoked in the manner invented by Happe-Mousche, his
celebrated ancestor, and sweetstuff for Garga-melle on feast days; and
a thousand other things which are detailed in the records of the
Ripuary laws and in certain folios of the Capitularies, Pragmatics,
royal establishments, ordinances and institutions of the period. To be
brief, the good man, pu