being so?  Give me—­Patience! thou widgeon.  Our laws are like cobwebs; your silly little flies are stopped, caught, and destroyed therein, but your stronger ones break them, and force and carry them which way they please.  Likewise, don’t think we are so mad as to set up our nets to snap up your great robbers and tyrants.  No, they are somewhat too hard for us, there’s no meddling with them; for they would make no more of us than we make of the little ones.  But you paltry, silly, innocent wretches must make us amends; and, by gold, we will innocentize your fopship with a wannion, you never were so innocentized in your days; the devil shall sing mass among ye.

Friar John, hearing him run on at that mad rate, had no longer the power to remain silent, but cried to him, Heigh-day!  Prithee, Mr. Devil in a coif, wouldst thou have a man tell thee more than he knows?  Hasn’t the fellow told you he does not know a word of the business?  His name is Twyford.  A plague rot you! won’t truth serve your turns?  Why, how now, Mr. Prate-apace, cried Gripe-men-all, taking him short, marry come up, who made you so saucy as to open your lips before you were spoken to?  Give me —­Patience!  By gold! this is the first time since I have reigned that anyone has had the impudence to speak before he was bidden.  How came this mad fellow to break loose? (Villain, thou liest, said Friar John, without stirring his lips.) Sirrah, sirrah, continued Gripe-men-all, I doubt thou wilt have business enough on thy hands when it comes to thy turn to answer.  (Damme, thou liest, said Friar John, silently.) Dost thou think, continued my lord, thou art in the wilderness of your foolish university, wrangling and bawling among the idle, wandering searchers and hunters after truth?  By gold, we have here other fish to fry; we go another gate’s-way to work, that we do.  By gold, people here must give categorical answers to what they don’t know.  By gold, they must confess they have done those things which they have not nor ought to have done.  By gold, they must protest that they know what they never knew in their lives; and, after all, patience perforce must be their only remedy, as well as a mad dog’s.  Here silly geese are plucked, yet cackle not.  Sirrah, give me—­an account whether you had a letter of attorney, or whether you were feed or no, that you offered to bawl in another man’s cause?  I see you had no authority to speak, and I may chance to have you wed to something you won’t like.  Oh, you devils, cried Friar John, proto-devils, panto-devils, you would wed a monk, would you?  Ho hu! ho hu!  A heretic! a heretic!  I’ll give thee out for a rank heretic.

Chapter 5.XIII.

How Panurge solved Gripe-men-all’s riddle.

Gripe-men-all, as if he had not heard what Friar John said, directed his discourse to Panurge, saying to him, Well, what have you to say for yourself, Mr. Rogue-enough, hah?  Give, give me out of hand—­an answer.  Say? quoth Panurge; why, what would you have me say?  I say that we are damnably beshit, since you give no heed at all to the equity of the plea, and the devil sings among you.  Let this answer serve for all, I beseech you, and let us go out about our business; I am no longer able to hold out, as gad shall judge me.