I have found here a Scythian tarand, an animal strange and wonderful for the variations of colour on its skin and hair, according to the distinction of neighbouring things; it is as tractable and easily kept as a lamb.  Be pleased to accept of it.

I also send you three young unicorns, which are the tamest of creatures.

I have conferred with the esquire, and taught him how they must be fed.  These cannot graze on the ground by reason of the long horn on their forehead, but are forced to browse on fruit trees, or on proper racks, or to be fed by hand, with herbs, sheaves, apples, pears, barley, rye, and other fruits and roots, being placed before them.

I am amazed that ancient writers should report them to be so wild, furious, and dangerous, and never seen alive; far from it, you will find that they are the mildest things in the world, provided they are not maliciously offended.  Likewise I send you the life and deeds of Achilles in curious tapestry; assuring you whatever rarities of animals, plants, birds, or precious stones, and others, I shall be able to find and purchase in our travels, shall be brought to you, God willing, whom I beseech, by his blessed grace, to preserve you.

From Medamothy, this 15th of June.  Panurge, Friar John, Epistemon, Zenomanes, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, and Carpalin, having most humbly kissed your hand, return your salute a thousand times.

       Your most dutiful son and servant, Pantagruel.

While Pantagruel was writing this letter, Malicorne was made welcome by all with a thousand goodly good-morrows and how-d’ye’s; they clung about him so that I cannot tell you how much they made of him, how many humble services, how many from my love and to my love were sent with him.  Pantagruel, having writ his letters, sat down at table with him, and afterwards presented him with a large chain of gold, weighing eight hundred crowns, between whose septenary links some large diamonds, rubies, emeralds, turquoise stones, and unions were alternately set in.  To each of his bark’s crew he ordered to be given five hundred crowns.  To Gargantua, his father, he sent the tarand covered with a cloth of satin, brocaded with gold, and the tapestry containing the life and deeds of Achilles, with the three unicorns in friezed cloth of gold trappings; and so they left Medamothy—­Malicorne to return to Gargantua, Pantagruel to proceed in his voyage, during which Epistemon read to him the books which the esquire had brought, and because he found them jovial and pleasant, I shall give you an account of them, if you earnestly desire it.

Chapter 4.V.

How Pantagruel met a ship with passengers returning from Lanternland.