success of all their endeavours.  Witness the old wife Aurinia, and the good mother Velled, in the days of Vespasian.  You need not any way doubt but that feminine old age is always fructifying in qualities sublime—­I would have said sibylline.  Let us go, by the help, let us go, by the virtue of God, let us go.  Farewell, Friar John, I recommend the care of my codpiece to you.  Well, quoth Epistemon, I will follow you, with this protestation nevertheless, that if I happen to get a sure information, or otherwise find that she doth use any kind of charm or enchantment in her responses, it may not be imputed to me for a blame to leave you at the gate of her house, without accompanying you any further in.

Chapter 3.XVII.

How Panurge spoke to the Sibyl of Panzoust.

Their voyage was three days journeying.  On the third whereof was shown unto them the house of the vaticinatress standing on the knap or top of a hill, under a large and spacious walnut-tree.  Without great difficulty they entered into that straw-thatched cottage, scurvily built, naughtily movabled, and all besmoked.  It matters not, quoth Epistemon; Heraclitus, the grand Scotist and tenebrous darksome philosopher, was nothing astonished at his introit into such a coarse and paltry habitation; for he did usually show forth unto his sectators and disciples that the gods made as cheerfully their residence in these mean homely mansions as in sumptuous magnific palaces, replenished with all manner of delight, pomp, and pleasure.  I withal do really believe that the dwelling-place of the so famous and renowned Hecate was just such another petty cell as this is, when she made a feast therein to the valiant Theseus; and that of no other better structure was the cot or cabin of Hyreus, or Oenopion, wherein Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury were not ashamed, all three together, to harbour and sojourn a whole night, and there to take a full and hearty repast; for the payment of the shot they thankfully pissed Orion.  They finding the ancient woman at a corner of her own chimney, Epistemon said, She is indeed a true sibyl, and the lively portrait of one represented by the Grei kaminoi of Homer.  The old hag was in a pitiful bad plight and condition in matter of the outward state and complexion of her body, the ragged and tattered equipage of her person in the point of accoutrement, and beggarly poor provision of fare for her diet and entertainment; for she was ill apparelled, worse nourished, toothless, blear-eyed, crook-shouldered, snotty, her nose still dropping, and herself still drooping, faint, and pithless; whilst in this woefully wretched case she was making ready for her dinner porridge of wrinkled green coleworts, with a bit skin of yellow bacon, mixed with a twice-before-cooked sort of waterish, unsavoury broth, extracted out of bare and hollow bones.  Epistemon said, By the cross of a groat, we are to blame, nor shall we get