by and out of these little parcels, fragments, bits, scantlings, and shreds
of the law now in use, altogether concealing, suppressing, disannulling,
and abolishing the remainder, which did make for the total law; fearing
that, if the whole law were made manifest and laid open to the knowledge of
such as are interested in it, and the learned books of the ancient doctors
of the law upon the exposition of the Twelve Tables and Praetorian Edicts,
his villainous pranks, naughtiness, and vile impiety should come to the
public notice of the world. Therefore were it better, in my conceit, that
is to say, less inconvenient, that parties at variance in any juridical
case should in the dark march upon caltrops than submit the determination
of what is their right to such unhallowed sentences and horrible decrees;
as Cato in his time wished and advised that every judiciary court should be
paved with caltrops.

Chapter 3.XLV.

How Panurge taketh advice of Triboulet.

On the sixth day thereafter Pantagruel was returned home at the very same
hour that Triboulet was by water come from Blois. Panurge, at his arrival,
gave him a hog's bladder puffed up with wind, and resounding because of the
hard peas that were within it. Moreover he did present him with a gilt
wooden sword, a hollow budget made of a tortoise shell, an osier-wattled
wicker-bottle full of Breton wine, and five-and-twenty apples of the
orchard of Blandureau.

If he be such a fool, quoth Carpalin, as to be won with apples, there is no
more wit in his pate than in the head of an ordinary cabbage. Triboulet
girded the sword and scrip to his side, took the bladder in his hand, ate
some few of the apples, and drunk up all the wine. Panurge very wistly and
heedfully looking upon him said, I never yet saw a fool, and I have seen
ten thousand francs worth of that kind of cattle, who did not love to drink
heartily, and by good long draughts. When Triboulet had done with his
drinking, Panurge laid out before him and exposed the sum of the business
wherein he was to require his advice, in eloquent and choicely-sorted
terms, adorned with flourishes of rhetoric. But, before he had altogether
done, Triboulet with his fist gave him a bouncing whirret between the
shoulders, rendered back into his hand again the empty bottle, fillipped
and flirted him in the nose with the hog's bladder, and lastly, for a final
resolution, shaking and wagging his head strongly and disorderly, h