l matins, failed not to awake a little before midnight, and, being
up himself, awaked all the rest, in singing aloud, and with a full clear
voice, the song:

Awake, O Reinian, ho, awake!
Awake, O Reinian, ho!
Get up, you no more sleep must take;
Get up, for we must go.

When they were all roused and up, he said, My masters, it is a usual
saying, that we begin matins with coughing and supper with drinking. Let
us now, in doing clean contrarily, begin our matins with drinking, and at
night before supper we shall cough as hard as we can. What, said
Gargantua, to drink so soon after sleep? This is not to live according to
the diet and prescript rule of the physicians, for you ought first to scour
and cleanse your stomach of all its superfluities and excrements. Oh, well
physicked, said the monk; a hundred devils leap into my body, if there be
not more old drunkards than old physicians! I have made this paction and
covenant with my appetite, that it always lieth down and goes to bed with
myself, for to that I every day give very good order; then the next morning
it also riseth with me and gets up when I am awake. Mind you your charges,
gentlemen, or tend your cures as much as you will. I will get me to my
drawer; in terms of falconry, my tiring. What drawer or tiring do you
mean? said Gargantua. My breviary, said the monk, for just as the
falconers, before they feed their hawks, do make them draw at a hen's leg
to purge their brains of phlegm and sharpen them to a good appetite, so, by
taking this merry little breviary in the morning, I scour all my lungs and
am presently ready to drink.

After what manner, said Gargantua, do you say these fair hours and prayers
of yours? After the manner of Whipfield (Fessecamp, and corruptly Fecan.),
said the monk, by three psalms and three lessons, or nothing at all, he
that will. I never tie myself to hours, prayers, and sacraments; for they
are made for the man and not the man for them. Therefore is it that I make
my prayers in fashion of stirrup-leathers; I shorten or lengthen them when
I think good. Brevis oratio penetrat caelos et longa potatio evacuat
scyphos. Where is that written? By my faith, said Ponocrates, I cannot
tell, my pillicock, but thou art more worth than gold. Therein, said the
monk, I am like you; but, venite, apotemus. Then made they ready store of
carbonadoes, or rashers on the coals, and good fat soups, or brewis with
sippets; and t