nor tassel of falcon. My Lord Belloniere promised me a
lanner, but he wrote to me not long ago that he was become pursy. The
partridges will so multiply henceforth, that they will go near to eat up
our ears. I take no delight in the stalking-horse, for I catch such cold
that I am like to founder myself at that sport. If I do not run, toil,
travel, and trot about, I am not well at ease. True it is that in leaping
over the hedges and bushes my frock leaves always some of its wool behind
it. I have recovered a dainty greyhound; I give him to the devil, if he
suffer a hare to escape him. A groom was leading him to my Lord
Huntlittle, and I robbed him of him. Did I ill? No, Friar John, said
Gymnast, no, by all the devils that are, no! So, said the monk, do I
attest these same devils so long as they last, or rather, virtue (of) G--,
what could that gouty limpard have done with so fine a dog? By the body of
G--, he is better pleased when one presents him with a good yoke of oxen.
How now, said Ponocrates, you swear, Friar John. It is only, said the
monk, but to grace and adorn my speech. They are colours of a Ciceronian
rhetoric.

Chapter 1.XL.

Why monks are the outcasts of the world; and wherefore some have bigger
noses than others.

By the faith of a Christian, said Eudemon, I do wonderfully dote and enter
in a great ecstasy when I consider the honesty and good fellowship of this
monk, for he makes us here all merry. How is it, then, that they exclude
the monks from all good companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of
mirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as the bees drive away the
drones from their hives? Ignavum fucos pecus, said Maro, a praesepibus
arcent. Hereunto, answered Gargantua, there is nothing so true as that the
frock and cowl draw unto itself the opprobries, injuries, and maledictions
of the world, just as the wind called Cecias attracts the clouds. The
peremptory reason is, because they eat the ordure and excrements of the
world, that is to say, the sins of the people, and, like dung-chewers and
excrementitious eaters, they are cast into the privies and secessive
places, that is, the convents and abbeys, separated from political
conversation, as the jakes and retreats of a house are. But if you
conceive how an ape in a family is always mocked and provokingly incensed,
you shall easily apprehend how monks are shunned of all men, both young and
old. The ape keeps not