It is written so, and it is holy stuff, I warrant you; the truth whereof is like to last as long as a sack of corn may be had for a penny, and a puncheon of pure wine for threepence.  Wouldst thou be content to be found with thy genitories full in the day of judgment?  Dum venerit judicari?  Thou hast, quoth Panurge, a right, clear, and neat spirit, Friar John, my metropolitan cod; thou speakst in very deed pertinently and to purpose.  That belike was the reason which moved Leander of Abydos in Asia, whilst he was swimming through the Hellespontic sea to make a visit to his sweetheart Hero of Sestus in Europe, to pray unto Neptune and all the other marine gods, thus: 

  Now, whilst I go, have pity on me,
  And at my back returning drown me.

He was loth, it seems, to die with his cods overgorged.  He was to be commended; therefore do I promise, that from henceforth no malefactor shall by justice be executed within my jurisdiction of Salmigondinois, who shall not, for a day or two at least before, be permitted to culbut and foraminate onocrotalwise, that there remain not in all his vessels to write a Greek Y. Such a precious thing should not be foolishly cast away.  He will perhaps therewith beget a male, and so depart the more contentedly out of this life, that he shall have left behind him one for one.

Chapter 3.XXVII.

How Friar John merrily and sportingly counselleth Panurge.

By Saint Rigomet, quoth Friar John, I do advise thee to nothing, my dear friend Panurge, which I would not do myself were I in thy place.  Only have a special care, and take good heed thou solder well together the joints of the double-backed and two-bellied beast, and fortify thy nerves so strongly, that there be no discontinuance in the knocks of the venerean thwacking, else thou art lost, poor soul.  For if there pass long intervals betwixt the priapizing feats, and that thou make an intermission of too large a time, that will befall thee which betides the nurses if they desist from giving suck to children—­they lose their milk; and if continually thou do not hold thy aspersory tool in exercise, and keep thy mentul going, thy lacticinian nectar will be gone, and it will serve thee only as a pipe to piss out at, and thy cods for a wallet of lesser value than a beggar’s scrip.  This is a certain truth I tell thee, friend, and doubt not of it; for myself have seen the sad experiment thereof in many, who cannot now do what they would, because before they did not what they might have done:  Ex desuetudine amittuntur privilegia.  Non-usage oftentimes destroys one’s right, say the learned doctors of the law; therefore, my billy, entertain as well as possibly thou canst that hypogastrian lower sort of troglodytic people, that their chief pleasure may be placed in the case of sempiternal labouring.  Give order that henceforth they live not, like idle gentlemen, idly upon their rents and