But what then, my gentle companion?
That doth but betoken that I will hereafter drink so much the more.

That is not, the devil hale it, the thing that I fear; nor is it there where my shoe pinches.

The thing that I doubt most, and have greatest reason to dread and suspect is, that through some long absence of our King Pantagruel (to whom I must needs bear company should he go to all the devils of Barathrum), my future wife shall make me a cuckold.

This is, in truth, the long and short on't.

For I am by all those whom I have spoke to menaced and threatened with a horned fortune, and all of them affirm it is the lot to which from heaven I am predestinated.