us, and so much
the more scandalous that your conjugal bed will be incestuously
contaminated with the filthiness of a monkery lecher. Moreover, he says
that you will be the hornpipe of Buzansay, that is to say, well-horned,
hornified, and cornuted. And, as Triboulet's uncle asked from Louis the
Twelfth, for a younger brother of his own who lived at Blois, the hornpipes
of Buzansay, for the organ pipes, through the mistake of one word for
another, even so, whilst you think to marry a wise, humble, calm, discreet,
and honest wife, you shall unhappily stumble upon one witless, proud, loud,
obstreperous, bawling, clamorous, and more unpleasant than any Buzansay
hornpipe. Consider withal how he flirted you on the nose with the bladder,
and gave you a sound thumping blow with his fist upon the ridge of the
back. This denotates and presageth that you shall be banged, beaten, and
fillipped by her, and that also she will steal of your goods from you, as
you stole the hog's bladder from the little boys of Vaubreton.

Flat contrary, quoth Panurge;--not that I would impudently exempt myself
from being a vassal in the territory of folly. I hold of that
jurisdiction, and am subject thereto, I confess it. And why should I not?
For the whole world is foolish. In the old Lorraine language, fou for tou,
all and fool, were the same thing. Besides, it is avouched by Solomon that
infinite is the number of fools. From an infinity nothing can be deducted
or abated, nor yet, by the testimony of Aristotle, can anything thereto be
added or subjoined. Therefore were I a mad fool if, being a fool, I should
not hold myself a fool. After the same manner of speaking, we may aver the
number of the mad and enraged folks to be infinite. Avicenna maketh no
bones to assert that the several kinds of madness are infinite. Though
this much of Triboulet's words tend little to my advantage, howbeit the
prejudice which I sustain thereby be common with me to all other men, yet
the rest of his talk and gesture maketh altogether for me. He said to my
wife, Be wary of the monkey; that is as much as if she should be cheery,
and take as much delight in a monkey as ever did the Lesbia of Catullus in
her sparrow; who will for his recreation pass his time no less joyfully at
the exercise of snatching flies than heretofore did the merciless
fly-catcher Domitian. Withal he meant, by another part of his discourse,
that she should be of a jovial country-like hu