and infection to any
well-polished state or commonwealth. What I have told you of dice, I say
the same of the play at cockall. It is a lottery of the like guile and
deceitfulness; and therefore do not for convincing of me allege in
opposition to this my opinion, or bring in the example of the fortunate cast
of Tiberius, within the fountain of Aponus, at the oracle of Gerion. These
are the baited hooks by which the devil attracts and draweth unto him the
foolish souls of silly people into eternal perdition.

Nevertheless, to satisfy your humour in some measure, I am content you
throw three dice upon this table, that, according to the number of the
blots which shall happen to be cast up, we may hit upon a verse of that
page which in the setting open of the book you shall have pitched upon.

Have you any dice in your pocket? A whole bagful, answered Panurge. That
is provision against the devil, as is expounded by Merlin Coccaius, Lib.
2. De Patria Diabolorum. The devil would be sure to take me napping, and
very much at unawares, if he should find me without dice. With this, the
three dice being taken out, produced, and thrown, they fell so pat upon the
lower points that the cast was five, six, and five. These are, quoth
Panurge, sixteen in all. Let us take the sixteenth line of the page. The
number pleaseth me very well; I hope we shall have a prosperous and happy
chance. May I be thrown amidst all the devils of hell, even as a great
bowl cast athwart at a set of ninepins, or cannon-ball shot among a
battalion of foot, in case so many times I do not boult my future wife the
first night of our marriage! Of that, forsooth, I make no doubt at all,
quoth Pantagruel. You needed not to have rapped forth such a horrid
imprecation, the sooner to procure credit for the performance of so small a
business, seeing possibly the first bout will be amiss, and that you know
is usually at tennis called fifteen. At the next justling turn you may
readily amend that fault, and so complete your reckoning of sixteen. Is it
so, quoth Panurge, that you understand the matter? And must my words be
thus interpreted? Nay, believe me never yet was any solecism committed by
that valiant champion who often hath for me in Belly-dale stood sentry at
the hypogastrian cranny. Did you ever hitherto find me in the
confraternity of the faulty? Never, I trow; never, nor ever shall, for
ever and a day. I do the feat like a goodly friar or fath