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

CHAPTER 5
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I have no more to say to thee, but that, as thou likest thy former entertainment, thou wilt tell me more of the next; for it will go ten times worse with thee unless, by gold, you give me--a solution to the riddle I propounded.

Give, give--it, without any more ado.
By gold, quoth Panurge, 'tis a black mite or weevil which is born of a white bean, and sallies out at the hole which he makes gnawing it; the mite being turned into a kind of fly, sometimes walks and sometimes flies over hills and dales.

Now Pythagoras, the philosopher, and his sect, besides many others, wondering at its birth in such a place (which makes some argue for equivocal generation), thought that by a metempsychosis the body of that insect was the lodging of a human soul.

Now, were you men here, after your welcomed death, according to his opinion, your souls would most certainly enter into the body of mites or weevils; for in your present state of life you are good for nothing in the world but to gnaw, bite, eat, and devour all things, so in the next you'll e'en gnaw and devour your mother's very sides, as the vipers do.

Now, by gold, I think I have fairly solved and resolved your riddle.
May my bauble be turned into a nutcracker, quoth Friar John, if I could not almost find in my heart to wish that what comes out at my bunghole were beans, that these evil weevils might feed as they deserve.
Panurge then, without any more ado, threw a large leathern purse stuffed with gold crowns (ecus au soleil) among them.
The Furred Law-cats no sooner heard the jingling of the chink but they all began to bestir their claws, like a parcel of fiddlers running a division; and then fell to't, squimble, squamble, catch that catch can.


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