Pan.  It is bien chien, chie chante, well cacked and cackled, shitten, and sung in matter of talk.  Let us resolve on somewhat.

  Trouil.  I do not gainsay it.

Pan.  Have a little patience.  Seeing I cannot on this side draw any blood of you, I will try if with the lancet of my judgment I be able to bleed you in another vein.  Are you married, or are you not?

  Trouil.  Neither the one nor the other, and both together.

Pan.  O the good God help us!  By the death of a buffle-ox, I sweat with the toil and travail that I am put to, and find my digestion broke off, disturbed, and interrupted, for all my phrenes, metaphrenes, and diaphragms, back, belly, midriff, muscles, veins, and sinews are held in a suspense and for a while discharged from their proper offices to stretch forth their several powers and abilities for incornifistibulating and laying up into the hamper of my understanding your various sayings and answers.

  Trouil.  I shall be no hinderer thereof.

  Pan.  Tush, for shame!  Our faithful friend, speak; are you married?

  Trouil.  I think so.

  Pan.  You were also married before you had this wife?

  Trouil.  It is possible.

  Pan.  Had you good luck in your first marriage?

  Trouil.  It is not impossible.

  Pan.  How thrive you with this second wife of yours?

  Trouil.  Even as it pleaseth my fatal destiny.

  Pan.  But what, in good earnest?  Tell me—­do you prosper well with her?

  Trouil.  It is likely.

Pan.  Come on, in the name of God.  I vow, by the burden of Saint Christopher, that I had rather undertake the fetching of a fart forth of the belly of a dead ass than to draw out of you a positive and determinate resolution.  Yet shall I be sure at this time to have a snatch at you, and get my claws over you.  Our trusty friend, let us shame the devil of hell, and confess the verity.  Were you ever a cuckold?  I say, you who are here, and not that other you who playeth below in the tennis-court?

  Trouil.  No, if it was not predestinated.

Pan.  By the flesh, blood, and body, I swear, reswear, forswear, abjure, and renounce, he evades and avoids, shifts, and escapes me, and quite slips and winds himself out of my grips and clutches.

At these words Gargantua arose and said, Praised be the good God in all things, but especially for bringing the world into that height of refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects.  Blessed be the holy name of God!  Veritably, it is like henceforth to be found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls by the muzzle, wolves by the tail, goats by the beard, and flying birds by the feet, than to entrap such philosophers in their words.  Farewell, my worthy, dear, and honest friends.