How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.

By Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear friend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place. Only have a special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of the double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so strongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean thwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul. For if there pass long intervals betwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too large a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist from giving suck to children — they lose their milk; and if continually thou do not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy lacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to piss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar’s scrip. This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it; for myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do what they would, because before they did not what they might have done: Ex desuetudine amittuntur privilegia. Non-usage oftentimes destroys one’s right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal labouring. Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen, idly upon their rents and revenues, but that they may work for their livelihood by breaking ground within the Paphian trenches. Nay truly, answered Panurge, Friar John, my left ballock, I will believe thee, for thou dealest plain with me, and fallest downright square upon the business, without going about the bush with frivolous circumstances and unnecessary reservations. Thou with the splendour of a piercing wit hast dissipated all the lowering clouds of anxious apprehensions and suspicions which did intimidate and terrify me; therefore the heavens be pleased to grant to thee at all she-conflicts a stiff-standing fortune. Well then, as thou hast said, so will I do; I will, in good faith, marry,— in that point there shall be no failing, I promise thee,— and shall have always by me pretty girls clothed with the name of my wife’s waiting-maids, that, lying under thy wings, thou mayest be night-protector of their sisterhood.

Let this serve for the first part of the sermon. Hearken, quoth Friar John, to the oracle of the bells of Varenes. What say they? I hear and understand them, quoth Panurge; their sound is, by my thirst, more uprightly fatidical than that of Jove’s great kettles in Dodona. Hearken! Take thee a wife, take thee a wife, and marry, marry, marry; for if thou marry, thou shalt find good therein, herein, here in a wife thou shalt find good; so marry, marry. I will assure thee that I shall be married; all the elements invite and prompt me to it. Let this word be to thee a brazen wall, by diffidence not to be broken through. As for the second part of this our doctrine,— thou seemest in some measure to mistrust the readiness of my paternity in the practising of my placket-racket within the Aphrodisian tennis-court at all times fitting, as if the stiff god of gardens were not favourable to me. I pray thee, favour me so much as to believe that I still have him at a beck, attending always my commandments, docile, obedient, vigorous, and active in all things and everywhere, and never stubborn or refractory to my will or pleasure. I need no more but to let go the reins, and slacken the leash, which is the belly-point, and when the game is shown unto him, say, Hey, Jack, to thy booty! he will not fail even then to flesh himself upon his prey, and ............