Then Double-fee led us up to a private staircase, and showed us into a room, whence, without being seen, out at a loophole we could see their worships in the great wine-press, where none could be admitted without their leave.  Their worships, as he called them, were about a score of fusty crack-ropes and gallow-clappers, or rather more, all posted before a bar, and staring at each other like so many dead pigs.  Their paws were as long as a crane’s foot, and their claws four-and-twenty inches long at least; for you must know they are enjoined never to pare off the least chip of them, so that they grow as crooked as a Welsh hook or a hedging-bill.

We saw a swingeing bunch of grapes that are gathered and squeezed in that country, brought in by them.  As soon as it was laid down, they clapped it into the press, and there was not a bit of it out of which each of them did not squeeze some oil of gold; insomuch that the poor grape was tried with a witness, and brought off so drained and picked, and so dry, that there was not the least moisture, juice, or substance left in it; for they had pressed out its very quintessence.

Double-fee told us they had not often such huge bunches; but, let the worst come to the worst, they were sure never to be without others in their press.  But hark you me, master of mine, asked Panurge, have they not some of different growth?  Ay, marry have they, quoth Double-fee.  Do you see here this little bunch, to which they are going to give t’other wrench?  It is of tithe-growth, you must know; they crushed, wrung, squeezed and strained out the very heart’s blood of it but the other day; but it did not bleed freely; the oil came hard, and smelt of the priest’s chest; so that they found there was not much good to be got out of it.  Why then, said Pantagruel, do they put it again into the press?  Only, answered Double-fee, for fear there should still lurk some juice among the husks and hullings in the mother of the grape.  The devil be damned! cried Friar John; do you call these same folks illiterate lobcocks and duncical doddipolls?  May I be broiled like a red herring if I do not think they are wise enough to skin a flint and draw oil out of a brick wall.  So they are, said Double-fee; for they sometimes put castles, parks, and forests into the press, and out of them all extract aurum potabile.  You mean portabile, I suppose, cried Epistemon, such as may be borne.  I mean as I said, replied Double-fee, potabile, such as may be drunk; for it makes them drink many a good bottle more than otherwise they should.

But I cannot better satisfy you as to the growth of the vine-tree sirup that is here squeezed out of grapes, than in desiring you to look yonder in that back-yard, where you will see above a thousand different growths that lie waiting to be squeezed every moment.  Here are some of the public and some of the private growth; some of the builders’ fortifications, loans, gifts, and gratuities, escheats, forfeitures,