the emolument and utility
that is in wearing great codpieces; but time would one day teach it them,
as all things have been invented in time. God keep from hurt, said he, the
good fellow whose long codpiece or braguet hath saved his life! God keep
from hurt him whose long braguet hath been worth to him in one day one
hundred threescore thousand and nine crowns! God keep from hurt him who by
his long braguet hath saved a whole city from dying by famine! And, by G-,
I will make a book of the commodity of long braguets when I shall have more
leisure. And indeed he composed a fair great book with figures, but it is
not printed as yet that I know of.

Chapter 2.XVI.

Of the qualities and conditions of Panurge.

Panurge was of a middle stature, not too high nor too low, and had somewhat
an aquiline nose, made like the handle of a razor. He was at that time
five and thirty years old or thereabouts, fine to gild like a leaden
dagger--for he was a notable cheater and coney-catcher--he was a very
gallant and proper man of his person, only that he was a little lecherous,
and naturally subject to a kind of disease which at that time they called
lack of money--it is an incomparable grief, yet, notwithstanding, he had
three score and three tricks to come by it at his need, of which the most
honourable and most ordinary was in manner of thieving, secret purloining
and filching, for he was a wicked lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roister,
rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in
Paris; otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous man
in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and devising mischief
against the sergeants and the watch.

At one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters and roaring
boys, made them in the evening drink like Templars, afterwards led them
till they came under St. Genevieve, or about the college of Navarre, and,
at the hour that the watch was coming up that way--which he knew by putting
his sword upon the pavement, and his ear by it, and, when he heard his
sword shake, it was an infallible sign that the watch was near at that
instant--then he and his companions took a tumbrel or dung-cart, and gave
it the brangle, hurling it with all their force down the hill, and so
overthrew all the poor watchmen like pigs, and then ran away upon the other
side; for in less than two days he knew all the streets, lanes, and
turnings in Paris