are you come hither
to dispute contentiously in those propositions you have set down, or,
otherwise, but to learn and know the truth? To which answered Thaumast,
Sir, no other thing brought me hither but the great desire I had to learn
and to know that of which I have doubted all my life long, and have neither
found book nor man able to content me in the resolution of those doubts
which I have proposed. And, as for disputing contentiously, I will not do
it, for it is too base a thing, and therefore leave it to those sottish
sophisters who in their disputes do not search for the truth, but for
contradiction only and debate. Then said Panurge, If I, who am but a mean
and inconsiderable disciple of my master my lord Pantagruel, content and
satisfy you in all and everything, it were a thing below my said master
wherewith to trouble him. Therefore is it fitter that he be chairman, and
sit as a judge and moderator of our discourse and purpose, and give you
satisfaction in many things wherein perhaps I shall be wanting to your
expectation. Truly, said Thaumast, it is very well said; begin then. Now
you must note that Panurge had set at the end of his long codpiece a pretty
tuft of red silk, as also of white, green, and blue, and within it had put
a fair orange.

Chapter 2.XIX.

How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued by signs.

Everybody then taking heed, and hearkening with great silence, the
Englishman lift up on high into the air his two hands severally, clunching
in all the tops of his fingers together, after the manner which, a la
Chinonnese, they call the hen's arse, and struck the one hand on the other
by the nails four several times. Then he, opening them, struck the one
with the flat of the other till it yielded a clashing noise, and that only
once. Again, in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards
four times in opening them. Then did he lay them joined, and extended the
one towards the other, as if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers
unto God. Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his right hand, and put
the thumb thereof into the nostril of the same side, holding his four
fingers straight out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point of
his nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making the other wink with a
profound depression of the eyebrows and eyelids. Then lifted he up his
left hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and