distracted with sudden affrightments, he would startle and say that Pantagruel held him by the neck.  Besides that, it procured him a continual drought and desire to drink, so that after some few years he died of the death Roland, in plain English called thirst, a work of divine vengeance, showing us that which saith the philosopher and Aulus Gellius, that it becometh us to speak according to the common language; and that we should, as said Octavian Augustus, strive to shun all strange and unknown terms with as much heedfulness and circumspection as pilots of ships use to avoid the rocks and banks in the sea.

Chapter 2.VII.

How Pantagruel came to Paris, and of the choice books of the Library of St. Victor.

After that Pantagruel had studied very well at Orleans, he resolved to see the great University at Paris; but, before his departure, he was informed that there was a huge big bell at St. Anian in the said town of Orleans, under the ground, which had been there above two hundred and fourteen years, for it was so great that they could not by any device get it so much as above the ground, although they used all the means that are found in Vitruvius de Architectura, Albertus de Re Aedificatoria, Euclid, Theon, Archimedes, and Hero de Ingeniis; for all that was to no purpose.  Wherefore, condescending heartily to the humble request of the citizens and inhabitants of the said town, he determined to remove it to the tower that was erected for it.  With that he came to the place where it was, and lifted it out of the ground with his little finger as easily as you would have done a hawk’s bell or bellwether’s tingle-tangle; but, before he would carry it to the foresaid tower or steeple appointed for it, he would needs make some music with it about the town, and ring it alongst all the streets as he carried it in his hand, wherewith all the people were very glad.  But there happened one great inconveniency, for with carrying it so, and ringing it about the streets, all the good Orleans wine turned instantly, waxed flat and was spoiled, which nobody there did perceive till the night following; for every man found himself so altered and a-dry with drinking these flat wines, that they did nothing but spit, and that as white as Malta cotton, saying, We have of the Pantagruel, and our very throats are salted.  This done, he came to Paris with his retinue.  And at his entry everyone came out to see him—­as you know well enough that the people of Paris is sottish by nature, by B flat and B sharp—­and beheld him with great astonishment, mixed with no less fear that he would carry away the palace into some other country, a remotis, and far from them, as his father formerly had done the great peal of bells at Our Lady’s Church to tie about his mare’s neck.  Now after he had stayed there a pretty space, and studied very well in all the seven liberal arts, he said it was a good town to live in, but not to die; for that the grave-digging rogues of St. Innocent used in frosty nights to warm their bums with dead men’s bones.  In his abode there he found the library of St. Victor a very stately and magnific one, especially in some books which were there, of which followeth the Repertory and Catalogue, Et primo,