may in the haste of their rage and fury of their impatience
take a qui for a quo, and instead of Raminagrobis
snatch up poor Panurge frank and free? Though
formerly, when I was deep in debt, they always failed.
Get you hence! I will not go thither.
Before God, the very bare apprehension thereof is
like to kill me. To be in a place where there
are greedy, famished, and hunger-starved devils; amongst
factious devils—amidst trading and trafficking
devils—O the Lord preserve me! Get
you hence! I dare pawn my credit on it, that
no Jacobin, Cordelier, Carmelite, Capuchin, Theatin,
or Minim will bestow any personal presence at his interment.
The wiser they, because he hath ordained nothing
for them in his latter will and testament. The
devil take me, if I go thither. If he be damned,
to his own loss and hindrance be it. What the
deuce moved him to be so snappish and depravedly bent
against the good fathers of the true religion?
Why did he cast them off, reject them, and drive them
quite out of his chamber, even in that very nick of
time when he stood in greatest need of the aid, suffrage,
and assistance of their devout prayers and holy admonitions?
Why did not he by testament leave them, at least,
some jolly lumps and cantles of substantial meat,
a parcel of cheek-puffing victuals, and a little belly-timber
and provision for the guts of these poor folks, who
have nothing but their life in this world? Let
him go thither who will, the devil take me if I go;
for, if I should, the devil would not fail to snatch
me up. Cancro. Ho, the pox! Get you
hence, Friar John! Art thou content that thirty
thousand wainload of devils should get away with thee
at this same very instant? If thou be, at my
request do these three things. First, give me
thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked with
crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same
may befall to thee which not long ago happened to
John Dodin, collector of the excise of Coudray, at
the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks.
This moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of
the bank of the ford with Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan
observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a new frock,
provided that in the transporting of him over the water
he would bear him upon his neck and shoulders, after
the manner of carrying dead goats; for he was a lusty,
strong-limbed, sturdy rogue. The condition being
agreed upon, Friar Crankcod trusseth himself up to
his very ballocks, and layeth upon his back, like
a fair little Saint Christopher, the load of the said
supplicant Dodin, and so carried him gaily and with
a good will, as Aeneas bore his father Anchises through
the conflagration of Troy, singing in the meanwhile
a pretty Ave Maris Stella. When they were in
the very deepest place of all the ford, a little above
the master-wheel of the water-mill, he asked if he
had any coin about him. Yes, quoth Dodin, a
whole bagful; and that he needed not to mistrust his