ten or pricked down in my Book of
Life. It is all with live stones that I set up and erect the fabrics of my
architecture, to wit, men. It was, according to my opinion, quoth
Pantagruel, to the end, first, that the fresh married folks should for the
first year reap a full and complete fruition of their pleasures in their
mutual exercise of the act of love, in such sort, that in waiting more at
leisure on the production of posterity and propagating of their progeny,
they might the better increase their race and make provision of new heirs.
That if, in the years thereafter, the men should, upon their undergoing of
some military adventure, happen to be killed, their names and coats-of-arms
might continue with their children in the same families. And next, that,
the wives thereby coming to know whether they were barren or fruitful--for
one year's trial, in regard of the maturity of age wherein of old they
married, was held sufficient for the discovery--they might pitch the more
suitably, in case of their first husband's decease, upon a second match.
The fertile women to be wedded to those who desire to multiply their issue;
and the sterile ones to such other mates, as, misregarding the storing of
their own lineage, choose them only for their virtues, learning, genteel
behaviour, domestic consolation, management of the house, and matrimonial
conveniences and comforts, and such like. The preachers of Varennes, saith
Panurge, detest and abhor the second marriages, as altogether foolish and
dishonest.

Foolish and dishonest? quoth Pantagruel. A plague take such preachers!
Yea but, quoth Panurge, the like mischief also befall the Friar Charmer,
who, in a full auditory making a sermon at Pereilly, and therein
abominating the reiteration of marriage and the entering again in the bonds
of a nuptial tie, did swear and heartily give himself to the swiftest devil
in hell, if he had not rather choose, and would much more willingly
undertake the unmaidening or depucelating of a hundred virgins, than the
simple drudgery of one widow. Truly I find your reason in that point right
good and strongly grounded.

But what would you think, if the cause why this exemption or immunity was
granted had no other foundation but that, during the whole space of the
said first year, they so lustily bobbed it with their female consorts, as
both reason and equity require they should do, that they had drained and
evacuated their spermatic vessels; and