[Gargantua and Pantagruel<br> Book III. by Francois Rabelais]@TWC D-Link book
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Book III.

CHAPTER 3
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Nor hath it escaped my notice how others of that sect have laboured hardly, yea, to the utmost of their abilities, to demonstrate that it is not a sensitive discerning or perception in it of the difference of wafts and smells, but merely a various manner of virtue and efficacy passing forth and flowing from the diversity of odoriferous substances applied near unto it.

Nevertheless, if you will studiously examine and seriously ponder and weigh in Critolaus's balance the strength of their reasons and arguments, you shall find that they, not only in this, but in several other matters also of the like nature, have spoken at random, and rather out of an ambitious envy to check and reprehend their betters than for any design to make inquiry into the solid truth.
I will not launch my little skiff any further into the wide ocean of this dispute, only will I tell you that the praise and commendation is not mean and slender which is due to those honest and good women who, living chastely and without blame, have had the power and virtue to curb, range, and subdue that unbridled, heady, and wild animal to an obedient, submissive, and obsequious yielding unto reason.

Therefore here will I make an end of my discourse thereon, when I shall have told you that the said animal being once satiated--if it be possible that it can be contented or satisfied--by that aliment which nature hath provided for it out of the epididymal storehouse of man, all its former and irregular and disordered motions are at an end, laid, and assuaged, all its vehement and unruly longings lulled, pacified, and quieted, and all the furious and raging lusts, appetites, and desires thereof appeased, calmed, and extinguished.
For this cause let it seem nothing strange unto you if we be in a perpetual danger of being cuckolds, that is to say, such of us as have not wherewithal fully to satisfy the appetite and expectation of that voracious animal.

Odds fish! quoth Panurge, have you no preventive cure in all your medicinal art for hindering one's head to be horny-graffed at home whilst his feet are plodding abroad?
Yes, that I have, my gallant friend, answered Rondibilis, and that which is a sovereign remedy, whereof I frequently make use myself; and, that you may the better relish, it is set down and written in the book of a most famous author, whose renown is of a standing of two thousand years.

Hearken and take good heed.


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