The next morning, after, of course, drinking, Gargantua set out on his journey.  He passed his time merrily along the highway, until he came a little above Orleans, in which place there was a forest five-and-thirty leagues long and seventeen wide.  This forest was most horribly fertile and abundant in gadflies and hornets, so that it was a very purgatory for asses and horses.  But Gargantua’s mare handsomely avenged all the outrages committed upon beasts of her kind.  For as soon as she entered the forest, and the hornets gave the attack, she drew out her tail and swished it about, and swept down all the trees with as much ease as a mower cuts grass.  And since then there has been neither a forest nor a hornet’s nest in that place, for all the country was thereby reduced to pasture land.

At last Gargantua came to Paris, and inquired what wine they drank there, and what learning was to be had.  Everybody in Paris looked upon him with great admiration.  For the people of this city are by nature so sottish, idle, and good-for-nothing, that a mountebank, a pardoner come from Rome to sell indulgences, or a fiddler in the crossways, will attract together more of them than a good preacher of the Gospel.  So troublesome were they in pursuing Gargantua, that he was compelled to seek a resting-place on the towers of Notre Dame.  There he amused himself by ringing the great bells, and it came into his mind that they would serve as cowbells to hang on the neck of his mare, so he carried them off to his lodging.

At this all the people of Paris rose up in sedition.  They are, as you know, so ready to uproars and insurrections, that foreign nations wonder at the stupidity of the kings of France at not restraining them from such tumultuous courses, seeing the manifold inconveniences which thence arise from day to day.  Believe for a truth, that the place where the people gathered together was called Nesle; there, after the case was proposed and argued, they resolved to send the oldest and most able of their learned men unto Gargantua to explain to him the great and horrible prejudice they sustained by the want of their bells.  Thereupon Gargantua put up the bells again in their place, and in acknowledgement of his courtesy, the citizens offered to maintain and feed his mare as long as he pleased.  And they sent her to graze in the forest of Biere, but I do not think she is there now.

For some years Gargantua studied at Paris under a wise and able master, and grew expert in manly sports of all kinds, as well as in learning of every sort.  Then he was called upon to return to his country to take part in a great and horrible war.

II.—­The Marvellous Deeds of Friar John