Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,126 pages of information about Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,126 pages of information about Gargantua and Pantagruel.
By ceromancy, where, by the means of wax dissolved into water, thou shalt see the figure, portrait, and lively representation of thy future wife, and of her fredin fredaliatory belly-thumping blades.  By capnomancy.  O the gallantest and most excellent of all secrets!  By axionomancy; we want only a hatchet and a jet-stone to be laid together upon a quick fire of hot embers.  O how bravely Homer was versed in the practice hereof towards Penelope’s suitors!  By onymancy; for that we have oil and wax.  By tephromancy.  Thou wilt see the ashes thus aloft dispersed exhibiting thy wife in a fine posture.  By botanomancy; for the nonce I have some few leaves in reserve.  By sicomancy; O divine art in fig-tree leaves!  By icthiomancy, in ancient times so celebrated, and put in use by Tiresias and Polydamas, with the like certainty of event as was tried of old at the Dina-ditch within that grove consecrated to Apollo which is in the territory of the Lycians.  By choiromancy; let us have a great many hogs, and thou shalt have the bladder of one of them.  By cheromancy, as the bean is found in the cake at the Epiphany vigil.  By anthropomancy, practised by the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus.  It is somewhat irksome, but thou wilt endure it well enough, seeing thou art destinated to be a cuckold.  By a sibylline stichomancy.  By onomatomancy.  How do they call thee?  Chaw-turd, quoth Panurge.  Or yet by alectryomancy.  If I should here with a compass draw a round, and in looking upon thee, and considering thy lot, divide the circumference thereof into four-and-twenty equal parts, then form a several letter of the alphabet upon every one of them; and, lastly, posit a barleycorn or two upon each of these so disposed letters, I durst promise upon my faith and honesty that, if a young virgin cock be permitted to range alongst and athwart them, he should only eat the grains which are set and placed upon these letters, A. C.U.C.K.O.L.D.  T.H.O.U.  S.H.A.L.T.  B.E.  And that as fatidically as, under the Emperor Valens, most perplexedly desirous to know the name of him who should be his successor to the empire, the cock vacticinating and alectryomantic ate up the pickles that were posited on the letters T.H.E.O.D.  Or, for the more certainty, will you have a trial of your fortune by the art of aruspiciny, by augury, or by extispiciny?  By turdispiciny, quoth Panurge.  Or yet by the mystery of necromancy?  I will, if you please, suddenly set up again and revive someone lately deceased, as Apollonius of Tyane did to Achilles, and the Pythoness in the presence of Saul; which body, so raised up and requickened, will tell us the sum of all you shall require of him:  no more nor less than, at the invocation of Erictho, a certain defunct person foretold to Pompey the whole progress and issue of the fatal battle fought in the Pharsalian fields.  Or, if you be afraid of the dead, as commonly all cuckolds are, I will make use of the faculty of sciomancy.

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Gargantua and Pantagruel from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.