ey were saying that at a certain battle of King Francis against Charles
the Fifth, Breton, armed cap-a-pie to the teeth, and mounted like St.
George, yet sneaked off, and played least in sight during the engagement.
Blood and oons, answered Breton, I was there, and can prove it easily; nay,
even where you, my lord, dared not have been. The duke began to resent
this as too rash and saucy; but Breton easily appeased him, and set them
all a-laughing. Egad, my lord, quoth he, I kept out of harm's way; I was
all the while with your page Jack, skulking in a certain place where you
had not dared hide your head as I did. Thus discoursing, they got to their
ships, and left the island of Chely.

Chapter 4.XII.

How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way
of living among the Catchpoles.

Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging,
a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make
on't. There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang
their father for a groat. They neither invited us to eat or drink; but,
with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our
service for the Legem pone.

One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living,
diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of
folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting,
stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed;
so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with
their wives and children would be starved. This is just, quoth Panurge,
like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards
the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged. By St. Patrick's
slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me
right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.

The way is this, said the interpreter. When a monk, levite, close-fisted
usurer, or lawyer owes a grudge to some neighbouring gentleman, he sends to
him one of those catchpoles or apparitors, who nabs, or at least cites him,
serves a writ or warrant upon him, thumps, abuses, and affronts him
impudently by natural instinct, and according to his pious instructions;
insomuch, that if the gentleman hath but any guts in his brains, and is not
more stupid than a gyrin frog, he will find himself obliged either to apply
a