d thy sides ache with laughter, how
wouldst thou chuckle, if thou couldst come again for a little while to
Chinon, and read the idiotic mouthings, and the maniacal babble of the
fools who have interpreted, commentated, torn, disgraced,
misunderstood, betrayed, defiled, adulterated and meddled with thy
peerless book. As many dogs as Panurge found busy with his lady's robe
at church, so many two-legged academic puppies have busied themselves
with befouling the high marble pyramid in which is cemented for ever
the seed of all fantastic and comic inventions, besides magnificent
instruction in all things. Although rare are the pilgrims who have the
breath to follow thy bark in its sublime peregrination through the
ocean of ideas, methods, varieties, religions, wisdom, and human
trickeries, at least their worship is unalloyed, pure, and
unadulterated, and thine omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-language
are by them bravely recognised. Therefore has a poor son of our merry
Touraine here been anxious, however unworthily, to do thee homage by
magnifying thine image, and glorifying the works of eternal memory, so
cherished by those who love the concentrative works wherein the
universal moral is contained, wherein are found, pressed like sardines
in their boxes, philosophical ideas on every subject, science, art and
eloquence, as well as theatrical mummeries.

THE SUCCUBUS

Prologue

A number of persons of the noble country of Touraine, considerably
edified by the warm search which the author is making into the
antiquities, adventures, good jokes, and pretty tales of that blessed
land, and believing for certain that he should know everything, have
asked him (after drinking with him of course understood), if he had
discovered the etymological reason, concerning which all the ladies of
the town are so curious, and from which a certain street in Tours is
called the Rue Chaude. By him it was replied, that he was much
astonished to see that the ancient inhabitants had forgotten the great
number of convents situated in this street, where the severe
continence of the monks and nuns might have caused the walls to be
made so hot that some woman of position should increase in size from
walking too slowly along them to vespers. A troublesome fellow,
wishing to appear learned, declared that formerly all the
scandalmongers of the neighbourhood were wont to meet in this place.
Another entangled himself in