Notes

Le Gouestre

Si as esté au pays de Piedmont,
Par ce pourtrait tu pourras recognoistre,
Qu’en y allant & traversant les Monts
Tu as peu voir de semblable Gouestre.

[Le Gouestre: homme à goître du Piémont ]

Julius Cæsar

Ozell’s note on Cæsar and Larix: “This is taken from Vitruvius l. ii. c ix. Philander, in his Remarks on this Passage of Vitruvius, Venice edition 1557, says, that Being at Venice he had a mind to try whether the Meleze, supposing it to be the Larix of Vitruvius, would withstand the Force of Fire, but found that this pretended Larix, was consumed by it, tho’ at first this Wood seemed to defy the Flame and make it keep it’s distance. Upon which M. le Clerc who had some of the true incombustible Larix, avers, in Art. ii of T. XII of his Biblioteque Choisie, that the Meleze of Philander was not the true Larix. I believe so too, but yet ‘tis certain, by what goes before in Rabelais that our Author took the Meleze for the Larix or incombustible Wood of Vitruvius. In short, the true Larix is not unknown to the Virtuosi of Rome, one of whom sent some of it, not long ago, to Holland, where it is still kept.

Julius Caesar

This story is told by Vitruvius, ii. 9, § 13.

Caesar

Anecdote empruntée à la Vie de César de Plutarch. C’est encore par pédantisme que Rabelais met Larignum à l’ablatif, après dedans.

Caesar

[There is no mention of this episode in Plutarch’s Life of Caesar.]

Notes

Sulla’s circus

A fight with several lions at once was first bestowed on Rome by Quintus Scaevola when consular aedile, but the first of all who exhibited a combat of 100 maned lions was Lucius Sulla, later dictator, in his praetorship [93 BC]. After Sulla, Pompey the Great showed in the Circus 600, including 315 with manes, and Caesar when dictator 400.

L. Sylla could not burn

Inter aquatilia dici debet et calamochnus, Latine adarca appellata. nascitur circa harundines tenues e spuma aquae dulcis ac marinae, ubi se miscent. vim habet causticam, ideo acopis utilis et contra perfrictionum vitia. tollit et mulierum lentigine in facie. et calami simul dici debent: phragmitis radix recens tusa luxatis medetur et spinae doloribus ex aceto inlita, Cyprii vero, qui et donax vocatur, cortex alopeciis medetur ustus et ulceribus veteratis, folia extrahendis quae infixa sint corpori et igni sacro. paniculae flos aures si intravit, exsurdat. sepiae atramento tanta vis est, ut in lucernam4 addito Aethiopas videri ablato priore lumine Anaxilaus tradat. rubeta excocta aqua potui data suum morbis medetur vel cuiuscumque ranae cinis. pulmone marino si confricetur lignum, ardere videtur adeo, ut baculum ita praeluceat.

Among water creatures ought also to be mentioned calamochnus, the Latin name of which is adarca. It collects around thin reeds from the foam forming where fresh and sea water mingle. It has a caustic property, and is therefore useful for tonic pills and to cure cold shiverings. It also removes freckles on the face of women. At the same time reeds should be spoken of. The root of phragmites, pounded fresh, cures dislocations, and applied with vinegar pains in the spine; the Cyprian reed indeed, also called donax, has a bark which when calcined cures mange and chronic ulcers, and its leaves extract things embedded in the flesh, and help erysipelas. The flower of the reed panicula causes complete deafness if it has entered the ears. The ink of the cuttle fish has so great power that Anaxilaus reports that poured into a lamp the former light utterly vanishes, and people appear as black as Ethiopians. A bramble toad thoroughly boiled in water and given to drink cures pigs’ diseases, as does the ash of any frog or toad. If wood is thoroughly rubbed with pulmo marinus it seems to be on fire, so much so that a walking-stick, so treated, throws a light forward.

Sylla could not burn

Book 15, Chapter 1: That it is written in the Annals of Quintus Claudius that wood smeared with alum does not burn.

The rhetorician Antonius Julianus, besides holding forth on many other occasions, had once declaimed with marvellous charm and felicity. For such scholastic declamations generally show the characteristics of the same man and the same eloquence, but nevertheless are not every day equally happy. We friends of his therefore thronged about him on all sides and were escorting him home, when, as we were on our way up the Cispian Hill, we saw that a block of houses, built high with many stories, had caught fire, and that now all the neighbouring buildings were burning in a mighty conflagration. Then some one of Julianus’ companions said: “The income from city property is great, but the dangers are far greater. But if some remedy could be devised to prevent houses in Rome from so constantly catching fire, by Jove! I would sell my country property and buy in the city.” And Julianus replied to him in his usual happy and graceful style: “If you had read the nineteenth book of the Annals of Quintus Claudius [Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius], that excellent and faithful writer, you would surely have learned from Archelaus, a praefect of king Mithridates, by what method and by what skill you might prevent fires, so that no wooden building of yours would burn, even though caught and penetrated by the flames.”
I inquired what this marvel of Quadrigarius was. He rejoined: “In that book then I found it recorded, that when Lucius Sulla attacked the Piraeus in the land of Attica, and Archelaus, praefect of king Mithridates, was defending it against him, Sulla was unable to burn a wooden tower constructed for purposes of defence, although it had been surrounded with fire on every side, because Archelaus had smeared it with alum.” The words of Quadrigarius in that book are as follows: “When Sulla had exerted himself for a long time, he led out his troops in order to set fire to a single wooden tower which Archelaus had interposed. He came, he drew near, he put wood under it, he beat off the Greeks, he applied fire; though they tried for a considerable time, they were never able to set it on fire, so thoroughly had Archelaus covered all the wood with alum. Sulla and his soldiers were amazed at this, and failing in his attempt, the general led back his troops.”

Ne peut oncques faire brusler &c.

Voiez Aulu-Gelle, l. 15 chap 1.

Sylla

“See Aulus Gellius, l. xv. c. i.”

Sylla

Voy. Aulu-Gelle, l. XV, c. 1.

laquelle L. Sylla ne peut oncques faire brusler

Le fait est raconté par Aulu-Gelle, XV, I: «turrim ligneam defendendi gratia structam, cum ex omni latere circumplexa igni foret, ardere non quisse, quod alumine ab Archelao oblita fuisset.»

Sylla

Pline, XXXV, 52; Aulu-Gelle, XV, 1 (LD/EC)

Sylla ne peut oncques faire brusler

Aulu-Gelle, XV, i.

laquelle L. Sylla ne peut oncques faire brusler

Anecdote rapportée par Aulu-Gelle, XV, 1. Rabelais en trouvait rappel dans le même chapitre plus hault cité de Cœlius Rhodiginus, Antiquae Lectiones, X, 10, mais les détails qu’il fournit supposent une lecture directe d’Aulu-Gelle.

Plus blanc & plus net

Voiez Plutarque, au traité des Oracles qui ont cessé.

plus beau, plus blanc, & plus net

Ozell’s note: “Whiter, &c.] See Plutarch, in his Treatise of Oracles ceasing.”

Plus blanc et plus net

Voyez Plutarque… (L.)

Notes

Buffetez & beus à demy

C’est-à-dire vuidez à moitié à force d’en tâter & retâter souvent le vin. Le Dictionnaire Fr. Ital. d’Oudin: Buffeter, assagiar il vino. Buffeteur de vin, assaggiator di vino. Buffeter un tonneau n’est pourtant pas proprement faire l’essai du vin qu’il contient, mais y mettre frauduleument autant d’eau qu’on en a tiré de vin sous ombre de le tâter. De là vient en cette signification le verbe buffeter synonyme de souffleter: terme emprunté de la monnie, pour exprimer l’action d’un faux monnoieur, qui dans la monnoie qu’il forge à l’image du Prince, fait au Prince un affront qui tient du soufflet. Mêler de l’eau dans le vin des conviez s’appeloit par la même raison servir en buffet. Mat. Cordier, chap. 24 n. 62 de son de corrupti sermonis emendatsone: in co convivio miscebaturnobis; On nous servoit en buffet, ou, comme a parlé Nicot, à buffet. Et Villon, encore en ce sens appelle vin de buffet, le vin qu’il croioit propre à cuire six hures de loup que par son grand Testament il légue au Chevalier du guet.

buffetez

Ozell’s note on “Should drink out”: Buffeter in French, which signifies to give one a Buffet, or Cuff; hence metaphorically to marr a Vessel of Wine by often tasting it before it is broached; or, rather, ashore, to fill it up with Water, after much Wine had been stolen or taken out of it. (Which to prevent, in the Case of Yorkshire and Burton Ale, I have heard, the Sender puts the full Cask into an empty one.) Oudin, in his Fr. Ital. Dictionary mistakes the meaning of this Word, when he says Buffeter le Vin, assagiur il Vino, taste Wine. Buffeter un tonneau (in French) is not properly to taste the Wine contained in the Vessel, but to put fraudulently therein as much Water as hath been taken our of it under pretence of tasting it. In this Sense the Verb Buffeter is synonymous to soussleter, to give on a box of the Ear, a Word borrowed from the King’s Mint, to express the Action of a false Coiner, who in forging the likeness of the Prince, does as it were, give him a Box on the Ear, by the Affront he puts on him, and so is called Soussleteur.

To mix Water in the Wine, a Man is entertaining his Guests with, is for the same Reason called Servir en buffet (not to serve at the Buffet, (Side-board) as some would take it.) … And Villon likewise in this Sense calls Vin de buffet the Wine which he thought proper for the boiling Six Wolves Heads, which by his Will he bequeathed to the Captain of the Night Watch of Paris.

buffetez

Alterez, falsifiez.

buffetez

On a déja vu ci-dessus, chapitre 38, C. soufleté. C. buffeté, C. déchiqueté. Villon, fol. m. 35 8° de ses œuvres, appelle vin de buffet, le vin qu’il croyoit propre à cuire six hures de loup qu par son grand Testament il lègue aux chevaliers du guet:

Aux capitaine dehan Riou,
Tant pour luy que pour ses archiers,
Je donne six hures de lou
Prins a gros mastins de bouchiers.
Ce n’est pas viande à porchiers
Qui les cuist en vin de buffet.
Pour manger de ces morceaulx chiers,
On feroit bien ung mauvais faict.

Et Matth. Cordier, au chap. XXIV, n° 62 de son De corr. serm. emendatione: in eo convivio miscebatur nobis; on nous servoit en buffet. On voit par tout ces passages que buffeter le vin se prenoit autrefois pour falsifier le vin, et le buffet de vin pour la falsification du vin. Il paroît même, par celui de chap. 28 de ce présent livre, que C. souffleté et C. buffeté sont synonymes dans la signification de C, qui, pour être trop vieux ou trop souvent exercé, ne feroit en quelque façon que de l’eau toute claire, si l’on s’avisoit de le mettre en œuvre. Ainsi je ne doute pas que ces façons de parler, vin buffeté, vin de buffet et buffeter le vin, ne viennent de buffle, dans la signification de soufflet. On dit de même donner un soufflet au roi, pour falsifier ou altérer la monnoye, soit en la rognant, soit en y mêlant de faux aloy. Et delà vient encore que, dans le passage du chaputre 28, j’entends de l’édition de 1553, qui est la meilleur à cet égard, à ces deux épitètes, soufleté, buveté, l’auteur a joint déchiqueté pour une troisième, et cela par une suit d’allusion à la monnoye, qui tantôt se trouve fausse, et tantôt rognée. Ainsi, dans le passage que nous examinons, vin buffeté est du vin mêlé d’eau, comme l’est souvent en France celui qu’on faut venir par eau, et en Saxe le vin du Rhin et d’ailleurs qu’on y mene par charroy. « Vina Rhenana et aliunde advecta, fait-on-dire à Luther, ab aurigis corrumpuntur. Ideo Itali nobis illudunt dicentes : vos Germani, non potestis vina vestra ab hydropisi curare. Nam mihi Martino Luthero contigit, quod a fidelissimo principe, vas vini Rhenani optimi mihi mittebatur. Evacuato vase undecim videbam signa in vase, quibus dolos aurigarum, qui bonum ebiberant vinum, et aquam infuderant, coignoscebam. » Coll. Medit. etc. Mart. Luth. ed 1571, tom. I, fol. 224. Tonneaux buffetez et bus à demy, sont donc des tonneaux vuidez à moitié, à force d’en tâter et retâter le vin. (L.) — De Marsy explique buffetez par altérés, falsifiés, et c’est aussi le sens que nous donnons à ce mot, d’après l’étymologie, d’après le passage même de Rabelais, et d’après celui-ci, de la première nouvelle de des Périers : « Ou se bufferent comme les vins, ou sont falsifiées comme les pierreries, ou sont adultérées comme tout. » Sur quoi La Monnoye fait cette remarque, en renvoyant à celui de Rabelais : « Bouf est le bruit qu’on fait en enflant les joues : delà boufer et boufons ces gens de néant qui, pour divertir le peuple, parceque les anciens bufets étoient ornés de plusieurs visages gros ou petits, à joues enflées; d’où bufeter a été dit premièrement pour boire au bufet, et ensuit pour boire au tonneau, comme les voituriers qui conduisent le vin. » Mais malgré ces deux autorités, nous ne pouvons admettre que bufeter et bufet viennent de buffe, joue ; buffeter doit venir, par le changement ordinaire de b en f ou en v, de buffet, et buffet de buvette, dont il n’est qu’une variante avec la finale du diminutif masculin. Ce n’est donc qu’un dérivé de buvant, formé du latin bibens : il semble que Le Duchat lui-même l’avoit reconnu; il cite, dans sa première édition, le dictionnaire d’Oudin, où on lit : « Buffeter, Assagiar il vino. Buffeteur de vin, assagiator de vino. » Si buffeter signifie altérer, frelater, c’est sans doute parceque le vin qu’on boit au buffer, et sur-tout au buffet d’un cabaret, est mélangé d’eau. On appelle encore buvette le lieu où l’on boit de semblable vin.

buffetez

Falsifiés.

buffetez

Dérobés.

buffetez

Chapardés

buffetez

Voir chap. XXVIII, n. 47

chaparder

Fam. Commettre de petits vols généralement d’objets. Synon. chiper, faucher (pop.), marauder. [La capitaine au lieutenant] « Croyez-vous! Ces bougres-là… Ils chapardent » (Genevoix, Au seuil des guitounes, 1918, p. 58). On est allé ensemble chaparder des châtaignes dans le clos de mon père (Estaunié, L’Ascension de M. Baslèvre, 1919, p. 12).

1. Verbe intrans. ds Littré (terme de bivouac), aller au fourrage, en maraude.

Etymol. et Hist. 1859 (L. Larchey, Les Excentricités de la lang. fr. en 1860, p. 443 : Chaparder. Marauder […] Le mot est, dit-on, de leur invention [des Zouaves]. Les journaux l’ont imprimé plus d’une fois pendant la guerre d’Orient. Vient sans doute du mot chat-pard […] Chat-tigre). Étymol. inconnue (FEW, t. 23, p. 126b). L’hyp. citée ci-dessus et reprise par Littré faisant de chaparder « rôder en guettant la proie » un dér. de chat-pard*, nom donné au tigre, sur le modèle de léopard* (Fur.), n’emporte pas la conviction

equinoctial

S’esbattre sous l’Equinoctial

Rabelais dore ici la pilule. Toutes les anciennes Relations ne parlent que de la peine qu’il y avoit à franchir la Ligne.

Sported under the Æquinoctial

Ozell notes regarding “Sported under the Æquinoctial”: “Here Rabelais gilds the Pill, cutting the Line has always been reported as a Thing far from being pleasant.”

s’Esbatre

To sport, play; dally, jeast; pass away the time in mirth, and recreation.

Notes

Desseichant sus le mal

Voiez Pline au même endroit.

waxing dry upon the sore

See Pliny, ibidem.

drying on the Hurt

Pliny N.H. xx. 23, § 97: “Sucus ex eo [cannabis semine] vermiculos aurium et quodcumque animal intraverit eicit sed cum dolore capitis, tantaque vis ei est ut aquae infusus coagiulare eam dicatur; et ideo jumentorum alvo succurit potis in aqua. Radix articulos contractos emollit in aqua cocta, item podagras et similis impetus; ambustis cruda inlinitur sed saepius mutatur prius quamarescat.”

Et ayez eſguard de le changer ainsi que le voirez deſeichant ſus le mal.

Cannabis in silvis primum nata est, nigrior foliis et asperior. semen eius extinguere genituram dicitur. sucus ex eo vermiculos aurium et quodcumque animal intraverit eicit, sed cum dolore capitis, tantaque vis ei est ut aquae infusus coagulare eam dicatur. et ideo iumentorum alvo succurrit potus in aqua. radix articulos contractos emollit in aqua cocta, item podagras et similes impetus. ambustis cruda inlinitur, sed saepius mutatur priusquam arescat.

Hemp at first grew in woods, with a darker and rougher leaf. Its seed is said to make the genitals impotent. The juice from it drives out of the ears the worms and any other creature that has entered them, but at the cost of a headache; so potent is its nature that when poured into water it is said to make it coagulate. And so, drunk in their water, it regulates the bowels of beasts of burden. The root boiled in water eases cramped joints, gout too and similar violent pains [Cf. § 228 and note on XXII. § 122]. It is applied raw to burns, but is often changed before it gets dry.

deseichant sus le mal

D’apres Pline, XX, 97: «Ambustis cruda illinitur, sed sæpius mutatur priusquam arescat». (Paul Delaunay)

Notes

Grand Chirurgien en son temps

Voir Pline, l. 24. chap. 8.

ulmeau

Ulmi et folia et cortex et rami vim habent spissandi et volnera contrahendi. corticis utique interior tilia lepras sedat et folia ex aceto inlita. corticis denarii pondus potum in hemina aquae frigidae alvum purgat pituitasque et aquas privatim trahit. inponitur et collectionibus lacrima et volneribus et ambustis quae decocto fovere prodest. umor in folliculis arboris huius nascens cuti nitorem inducit faciemque gratiorem praestat. cauliculi foliorum primi vino decocti tumores sanant extrahuntque per fistulas. idem praestant et tiliae corticis. multi corticem commanducatum volneribus utilissimum putant, folia trita aqua adspersa pedum tumori. umor quoque e medulla, uti diximus, castratae arboris effluens capillum reddit capiti inlitus defluentesque continet.

The leaves, bark and branches of the elm are styptic, and have the property of closing wounds. The inner bark in particular relieves leprous sores, as also does a local application of the leaves soaked in vinegar. One denarius of the bark, taken in a hemina of cold water, purges the bowels, being specific for carrying off phlegms and watery humours. Its tear is also applied locally to gatherings, wounds and burns, which it is good to foment with a decoction. The moisture forming in the pods of this tree brings a brightness to the skin and makes the looks more pleasing. The tips of the little stalks of the leaves boiled down in wine cure tumours and draw out the pus through fistulas. The same property is shown by the inner barks. Many hold that the bark when chewed is very good for wounds, and that the leaves, pounded and sprinkled with water, are so for swollen feet. An application of the moisture too, that exudes, as I have said [Book XVI. § 192], from the pith of the tree when lopped, restores hair to the scalp and prevents it from falling out.

The greatest surgeon

See Pliny, l. xxiv, c. viii.

grand Chirurgien

Voyez Pline, Liv. XXIV, Chap 8.

great Surgeon

Cf. Pliny xxiv. 8, § 33: “Ulmi et folia et cortex et rami vim habent spissandi et vulerna contrahendi.”

grand chirurgien

Allusion aux vertus thérapeutiques de cet arbre. Dioscoride en vante la deuxième écorce contre les derrmatoses, et Pline dit: «Ulmi et folia et cortex vim babent spissandi et vulnera contrahendi». XXIV, 33. (Paul Delaunay)

greatest physician

who, possessing a bark rich with healing virtues, was the greatest physician of his day.

Hamadryas

C’est la légende des Hamadryades (nymphes des arbres) , raconté par Athénée, Banquet, III, 78; cf. Gyraldi, Syntagma de deis gentium, Bâle, 1555, 170. L’ulmeau (l’orme) « feut grand Chirurgien en son temps », sans doute parce que les Anciens corrigeaient les enfants et les esclaves avec des verges d’orme (d’ou l’adjectif ulmi-tribus).

Ulmeau

Allusion aux vertus théreapeutiques de l’ormeau (Pline, XXIV, xxxiii).

grand chirurgien

Ptéléa: ulmeau ou orme. Rabelais en fait-il un chirurgien parce qu’il a des vertus thérapeutiques (Pline, XXIV, 8; Manardi, Epistolae medicinales, VIII, 1) ou parce que les verges avec lesquelles les Anciens administraient des corrections étaient souvent en bois d’orme? Mail il se peut encore que ce ne sout qu’une plaisante allusion à un chirurgien contemporain nommé Ulmeau ou Delorme.

Breaking wheel

Klassisches Rädern mit Rad und scharfkantigen Hölzern (Schweizer Chronik des Johannes Stumpf, Augsburg 1586)

breaking wheel

The breaking wheel, also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, was a torture device used for capital punishment from Antiquity into early modern times for public execution by breaking the criminal’s bones/bludgeoning him to death.

The wheel was typically a large wooden wagon wheel with many radial spokes. The condemned were lashed to the wheel and their limbs were beaten with a club or iron cudgel, with the gaps in the wheel allowing the limbs to give way and break.

Alternatively, the condemned were spread-eagled and broken on a saltire, a cross consisting of two wooden beams nailed in an “X” shape, after which the victim’s mangled body might be displayed on the wheel.

A wheel was sometimes used for the actual bludgeoning. During the execution for parricide of Franz Seuboldt in Nuremberg on 22 September 1589, a wheel was used as a cudgel. The executioner used wooden blocks to raise Seuboldt’s limbs, then broke them by slamming a wagon wheel down onto the limb.

The survival time after being “broken” could be extensive. Accounts exist of a 14th-century murderer who lived for three days after undergoing the punishment.

Pieter Spierenburg mentions a reference in sixth century author Gregory of Tours as a possible origin for the punishment of breaking someone on the wheel. In Gregory’s time, a criminal could be placed in a deep track, and then a heavily laden wagon was driven over him.

In France, the condemned were placed on a cartwheel with their limbs stretched out along the spokes over two sturdy wooden beams. The wheel was made to revolve slowly, and a large hammer or an iron bar was then applied to the limb over the gap between the beams, breaking the bones. This process was repeated several times per limb. Sometimes it was “mercifully” ordered that the executioner should strike the condemned on the chest and abdomen, blows known as coups de grâce (French: “blows of mercy”), which caused fatal injuries. Without those, the broken man could last hours and even days, during which birds could peck at the helpless victim. Eventually, shock and dehydration caused death. In France, a special grace, the retentum, could be granted, by which the condemned was strangled after the second or third blow, or in special cases, even before the breaking began.

Roüart

Rourreau, non de rotare roüer; mais de raucus, entant qu’il enroüe ceux qu’il étrangle.

executioner

Roüart, in Rabelais. This, Cotgrave says, signifies a Marshal, or Provost-Marshal, an Officer that breaks, or sees broken, Malefactors on the Wheel. Then Roüart must come from rotare, roüer, roüe, a Wheel. But M. du Chat, in the present Sense of the Executioners strangling the Offenders in question says Roüart comes from raucus, hoarse, because he by that Action makes them hoarse.

roüart

Bourreau: soit par allusion à rotare rouer, soit que cet ancien mot vienne de raucus, en tant que le Bourreau enrouë ceux qu’il prend à la gorge.

rouart

Rourreau, non de rotare roüer; mais de raucus, entant qu’il enroüe ceux qu’il étrangle. (L.) — Ce mot signifie certainement le bourreau qui roue les condamnés à la roue: on n’a jamais dit rouer de raucus, pour étrangler, ce verbe, ainsi que roué, vient de rota, roue. Aussi Pantagruel, c’est-à-dire François Ier et Henri Ii, qui faisoient mourir les hérétiques par le supplice de la corde et de l’estrapade, ne feut oncques rouart. Ils ne rouoient pas, ils pendoient, ou plutôt ils laissoient les fanatiques exercer leur rage, leur cruauté et leur avarice, en pendant, au nom d’un Dieu crucifié et clément, tous ceux qu’ils vouloient dépouiller ou dont ils vouloient se venver. On élevoit les martyrs de leur créance au gibet, avec une poulie et une corde, pour les faire périr par la flamme et par la fumée du feu qu’on allumoit sous eux. Rabelais, qui n’osoit s’expliquer sur ce qu’il pensoit d’une telle inhumanité, dit ici que Pantagruel tenoit à la gorge ces misérables, et qu’en cet état ils se plaignoient de la manière insupportable dont il leur chauffoit le tison. Voilà bien la corde de la potence: peut-on lire rien de plus clair et même rien de plus hardi? Voyez la note 8, strophe 6, chapitre ii, livre I.

Rouart

Fr. rouart, one who breaks men on the wheel. This is a very delicate and politic piece of exposulation against the hangings and burnings of Protestants which went on under Francis and Henry II. It was dangerous ground, and I think the effect of it increased by the almost eloquent exposition of the good uses to which hemp could be put. This passage may be compared with the sly stroke in iii 29 on the occupation of the Theologians.

rouart

Bourreau. «Rouart, dit Robert Estienne (1549), c’est à dire prevost des mareschaux, pour ce qu’il faict mettre les malfaiteurs sur la roue». (Sainéan, t. II, p. 114.)

rouart

Bourreau, qui soumet au supplice de la roue.

rouart

Bourreau: Ce serait peu flatteur de comparer Pantagruel (sortout s’il représent François I^er) à un bourreau!

Notes

Iphis

698. Iphis, a youth of humble birth, had chanced to see Anaxarete, a proud princess of old Teucer’s line. He saw her, and at once felt the fire of love through all his frame. Long did he fight against it; but when he found he could not overcome his passion by the power of reason, he came as a suppliant to her door.…
But she, more savage than the waves that rise at the setting of the Kids, harder than steel tempered in Noric fire, or living rock, which still holds firmly to its native bed, spurns him and mocks at him.…

He spoke, and raising his tearful eyes and pale arms to the door-posts that he had often decorated with his floral wreaths, he fastened a rope to the topmost beam, saying the while: ‘Does this garland please you, cruel and wicked girl?’ Then he thrust his head into the noose, even in that act turning his face towards her, and then, poor fellow, hung there, a lifeless weight with broken neck.…

Anaxarete’s house chanced to be near the street where the mournful procession was passing, and the sound of mourning came to the ears of the hard-hearted girl, whom already an avenging god was driving on. Yet, moved by the sound, she said: ‘Let us go see this tearful funeral.’ And she went into her high dwelling with its wide-open windows. Scarce had she gained a good look at I phis, lying there upon the bier, when her eyes stiffened at the sight and the warm blood fled from her pale body. She tried to step back from the window, but she stuck fast in her place. She tried to turn her face away, but this also she could not do; and gradually that stony nature took possession of her body which had been in her heart all along. And that you may not think this story false, Salamis still keeps a marble statue, the image of the princess.

Iphis

Voiez Ovide, Métamorph, l. 14.

Iphis

Iphis. See Ovid Metam. l. xiv

Iphis

Voyez Ovide, Métamorph., liv. XIV. (L.)

Iphis

Voy. Ovide, Metam. lib. X!V.

Iphis

Ov. Met. xiv. 698-742.

Iphis

Iphis se pendit du désespoir d’être dédaignée d’Anaxarète, V. Ovide, Métamorphoses, XIV, 698.

Iphias

to Iphis, dangling in a noose, because Anaxaretus spurned her…

Iphis

Ovide, Métamorphoses, XIV, v. 698 et suiv. (pour avoir été dédaignée d’Anaxarète).

Notes

Amate

This further fate befell the weary Latins, and shook the whole city to its base with grief: when from her palace the queen [Amate] sees the foe approaching, the walls assailed, flames mounting to the roofs, but nowhere Rutulian ranks or any troops of Turnus to meet them, the unhappy woman thinks that Turnus has been slain in combat and, her mind distraught by sudden anguish, cries out that she is the guilty source and spring of sorrows, and uttering many a wild word in the frenzy of grief, resolved to die she rends her purple robes, and from a lofty beam fastens the noose of a hideous death. As soon as the unhappy Latin women learned this disaster, first her daughter Lavinia, her hand tearing her golden tresses and rosy cheeks, falls into a frenzy, then all the throng around her; the wide halls ring with lamentations. From here the woeful rumour spreads throughout the town. Hearts sink; Latinus goes with rent raiment, dazed at his wife’s doom and his city’s downfall, defiling his hoary hair with showers of unclean dust, oft chiding himself that he did not give a ready welcome to Dardan Aeneas

Amate

Virgile parlant de cette Reine, Eneïd l. 12

Purpurcos moritura manu discindit amictur,
Et nodum informis lethi trahe nectit ab alta.

Amata

Amata. Virgil speaking of this Queen, Æneid l. xii

Purpureos meritura manu discindit amictus
Et noduium informis letbi trabe necit ab alta

Amate

Virgile, parlant de cette reine, Énéid., liv. XII:

Purpureos moritura manu discindit amictus,
Et nodum informis lethi trabe nectit ab alta.

(L.)

Amate

Voy. Virgile, Æneid lib. XII.

Amata

Virgil, Aen. xii. 602.

Amate

Elle se pendit de rage, n’ayant pu empêcher le mariage de sa fille Lavinie avec Énée. Cf. Virgile, Énéide, XII, 602.

Amata

Amata, wife of King Latinus, who, furious at preventing her daughter Lavinia’s marriage to Æneas, spitefully selected this mode of suicide…

Amate

Virgile, Énéid, XII, v. 602-603; Amata, épouse du roi Latinus, se pendit pour n’avoir pas pu empêcher le mariage de sa fille Lavinie avec Enée.