and activity in his arms, and a violent temptation in his mind to beat one or two sergeants, or such officers, provided they were not of the shaveling kind.  Homenas then said to us, The law was formerly given to the Jews by Moses, written by God himself.  At Delphos, before the portal of Apollo’s temple, this sentence, GNOTHI SEAUTON, was found written with a divine hand.  And some time after it, EI was also seen, and as divinely written and transmitted from heaven.  Cybele’s image was brought out of heaven, into a field called Pessinunt, in Phrygia; so was that of Diana to Tauris, if you will believe Euripides; the oriflamme, or holy standard, was transmitted out of heaven to the noble and most Christian kings of France, to fight against the unbelievers.  In the reign of Numa Pompilius, second King of the Romans, the famous copper buckler called Ancile was seen to descend from heaven.  At Acropolis, near Athens, Minerva’s statue formerly fell from the empyreal heaven.  In like manner the sacred decretals which you see were written with the hand of an angel of the cherubim kind.  You outlandish people will hardly believe this, I fear.  Little enough, of conscience, said Panurge.  And then, continued Homenas, they were miraculously transmitted to us here from the very heaven of heavens; in the same manner as the river Nile is called Diipetes by Homer, the father of all philosophy—­the holy decretals always excepted.  Now, because you have seen the pope, their evangelist and everlasting protector, we will give you leave to see and kiss them on the inside, if you think meet.  But then you must fast three days before, and canonically confess; nicely and strictly mustering up and inventorizing your sins, great and small, so thick that one single circumstance of them may not escape you; as our holy decretals, which you see, direct.  This will take up some time.  Man of God, answered Panurge, we have seen and descried decrees, and eke decretals enough o’ conscience; some on paper, other on parchment, fine and gay like any painted paper lantern, some on vellum, some in manuscript, and others in print; so you need not take half these pains to show us these.  We’ll take the goodwill for the deed, and thank you as much as if we had.  Ay, marry, said Homenas, but you never saw these that are angelically written.  Those in your country are only transcripts from ours; as we find it written by one of our old decretaline scholiasts.  For me, do not spare me; I do not value the labour, so I may serve you.  Do but tell me whether you will be confessed and fast only three short little days of God?  As for shriving, answered Panurge, there can be no great harm in’t; but this same fasting, master of mine, will hardly down with us at this time, for we have so very much overfasted ourselves at sea that the spiders have spun their cobwebs over our grinders.  Do but look on this good Friar John des Entomeures (Homenas then courteously demi-clipped him about the neck), some moss is growing in his throat