those doubts which I have proposed.  And, as for disputing contentiously, I will not do it, for it is too base a thing, and therefore leave it to those sottish sophisters who in their disputes do not search for the truth, but for contradiction only and debate.  Then said Panurge, If I, who am but a mean and inconsiderable disciple of my master my lord Pantagruel, content and satisfy you in all and everything, it were a thing below my said master wherewith to trouble him.  Therefore is it fitter that he be chairman, and sit as a judge and moderator of our discourse and purpose, and give you satisfaction in many things wherein perhaps I shall be wanting to your expectation.  Truly, said Thaumast, it is very well said; begin then.  Now you must note that Panurge had set at the end of his long codpiece a pretty tuft of red silk, as also of white, green, and blue, and within it had put a fair orange.

Chapter 2.XIX.

How Panurge put to a nonplus the Englishman that argued by signs.

Everybody then taking heed, and hearkening with great silence, the Englishman lift up on high into the air his two hands severally, clunching in all the tops of his fingers together, after the manner which, a la Chinonnese, they call the hen’s arse, and struck the one hand on the other by the nails four several times.  Then he, opening them, struck the one with the flat of the other till it yielded a clashing noise, and that only once.  Again, in joining them as before, he struck twice, and afterwards four times in opening them.  Then did he lay them joined, and extended the one towards the other, as if he had been devoutly to send up his prayers unto God.  Panurge suddenly lifted up in the air his right hand, and put the thumb thereof into the nostril of the same side, holding his four fingers straight out, and closed orderly in a parallel line to the point of his nose, shutting the left eye wholly, and making the other wink with a profound depression of the eyebrows and eyelids.  Then lifted he up his left hand, with hard wringing and stretching forth his four fingers and elevating his thumb, which he held in a line directly correspondent to the situation of his right hand, with the distance of a cubit and a half between them.  This done, in the same form he abased towards the ground about the one and the other hand.  Lastly, he held them in the midst, as aiming right at the Englishman’s nose.  And if Mercury,—­said the Englishman.  There Panurge interrupted him, and said, You have spoken, Mask.

Then made the Englishman this sign.  His left hand all open he lifted up into the air, then instantly shut into his fist the four fingers thereof, and his thumb extended at length he placed upon the gristle of his nose.  Presently after, he lifted up his right hand all open, and all open abased and bent it downwards, putting the thumb thereof in the very place where the little finger of the left hand did close in the fist, and the four right-hand fingers he softly moved in the air.  Then contrarily he did with the right hand what he had done with the left, and with the left what he had done with the right.