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

CHAPTER 5
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Oh, oh! returned Double-fee, that plump one is of the treasury, the very best growth in the whole country.
Whenever anyone of that growth is squeezed, there is not one of their worships but gets juice enough of it to soak his nose six months together.
When their worships were up, Pantagruel desired Double-fee to take us into that great wine-press, which he readily did.

As soon as we were in, Epistemon, who understood all sorts of tongues, began to show us many devices on the press, which was large and fine, and made of the wood of the cross--at least Double-fee told us so.

On each part of it were names of everything in the language of the country.

The spindle of the press was called receipt; the trough, cost and damages; the hole for the vice-pin, state; the side-boards, money paid into the office; the great beam, respite of homage; the branches, radietur; the side-beams, recuperetur; the fats, ignoramus; the two-handled basket, the rolls; the treading-place, acquittance; the dossers, validation; the panniers, authentic decrees; the pailes, potentials; the funnels, quietus est.
By the Queen of the Chitterlings, quoth Panurge, all the hieroglyphics of Egypt are mine a-- to this jargon.

Why! here are a parcel of words full as analogous as chalk and cheese, or a cat and a cart-wheel! But why, prithee, dear Double-fee, do they call these worshipful dons of yours ignorant fellows?
Only, said Double-fee, because they neither are, nor ought to be, clerks, and all must be ignorant as to what they transact here; nor is there to be any other reason given, but, The court hath said it; The court will have it so; The court has decreed it.


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