ations. My
wife, according to this female covenant, will flay it to me, if it be not
so already. I heartily grant my consent thereto, but will not give her
leave to flay it all. Nay, truly will I not, my noble king.

Yea but, quoth Epistemon, you say nothing of her most dreadful cries and
exclamations when she and we both saw the laurel-bough burn without
yielding any noise or crackling. You know it is a very dismal omen, an
inauspicious sign, unlucky indice, and token formidable, bad, disastrous,
and most unhappy, as is certified by Propertius, Tibullus, the quick
philosopher Porphyrius, Eustathius on the Iliads of Homer, and by many
others. Verily, verily, quoth Panurge, brave are the allegations which you
bring me, and testimonies of two-footed calves. These men were fools, as
they were poets; and dotards, as they were philosophers; full of folly, as
they were of philosophy.

Chapter 3.XIX.

How Pantagruel praiseth the counsel of dumb men.

Pantagruel, when this discourse was ended, held for a pretty while his
peace, seeming to be exceeding sad and pensive, then said to Panurge, The
malignant spirit misleads, beguileth, and seduceth you. I have read that
in times past the surest and most veritable oracles were not those which
either were delivered in writing or uttered by word of mouth in speaking.
For many times, in their interpretation, right witty, learned, and
ingenious men have been deceived through amphibologies, equivoques, and
obscurity of words, no less than by the brevity of their sentences. For
which cause Apollo, the god of vaticination, was surnamed Loxias. Those
which were represented then by signs and outward gestures were accounted
the truest and the most infallible. Such was the opinion of Heraclitus.
And Jupiter did himself in this manner give forth in Ammon frequently
predictions. Nor was he single in this practice; for Apollo did the like
amongst the Assyrians. His prophesying thus unto those people moved them
to paint him with a large long beard, and clothes beseeming an old settled
person of a most posed, staid, and grave behaviour; not naked, young, and
beardless, as he was portrayed most usually amongst the Grecians. Let us
make trial of this kind of fatidicency; and go you take advice of some dumb
person without any speaking. I am content, quoth Panurge. But, says
Pantagruel, it were requisite that the dumb you consult with be such as
have been deaf from the hour of thei