pit, the lemures, hobthrushes, and goblins will certainly swallow us alive, just as they devoured formerly one of Demetrius’s halberdiers for want of bridles.  Art thou here, Friar John?  Prithee, dear, dear cod, stay by me; I’m almost dead with fear.  Hast thou got thy bilbo?  Alas! poor pilgarlic’s defenceless.  I’m a naked man, thou knowest; let’s go back.  Zoons, fear nothing, cried Friar John; I’m by thee, and have thee fast by the collar; eighteen devils shan’t get thee out of my clutches, though I were unarmed.  Never did a man yet want weapons who had a good arm with as stout a heart.  Heaven would sooner send down a shower of them; even as in Provence, in the fields of La Crau, near Mariannes, there rained stones (they are there to this day) to help Hercules, who otherwise wanted wherewithal to fight Neptune’s two bastards.  But whither are we bound?  Are we a-going to the little children’s limbo?  By Pluto, they’ll bepaw and conskite us all.  Or are we going to hell for orders?  By cob’s body, I’ll hamper, bethwack, and belabour all the devils, now I have some vine-leaves in my shoes.  Thou shalt see me lay about me like mad, old boy.  Which way? where the devil are they?  I fear nothing but their damned horns; but cuckoldy Panurge’s bull-feather will altogether secure me from ’em.  Lo! in a prophetic spirit I already see him, like another Actaeon, horned, horny, hornified.  Prithee, quoth Panurge, take heed thyself, dear frater, lest, till monks have leave to marry, thou weddest something thou dostn’t like, as some cat-o’-nine-tails or the quartan ague; if thou dost, may I never come safe and sound out of this hypogeum, this subterranean cave, if I don’t tup and ram that disease merely for the sake of making thee a cornuted, corniferous property; otherwise I fancy the quartan ague is but an indifferent bedfellow.  I remember Gripe-men-all threatened to wed thee to some such thing; for which thou calledest him heretic.

Here our splendid lantern interrupted them, letting us know this was the place where we were to have a taste of the creature, and be silent; bidding us not despair of having the word of the Bottle before we went back, since we had lined our shoes with vine-leaves.

Come on then, cried Panurge, let’s charge through and through all the devils of hell; we can but perish, and that’s soon done.  However, I thought to have reserved my life for some mighty battle.  Move, move, move forwards; I am as stout as Hercules, my breeches are full of courage; my heart trembles a little, I own, but that’s only an effect of the coldness and dampness of this vault; ’tis neither fear nor ague.  Come on, move on, piss, pish, push on.  My name’s William Dreadnought.

Chapter 5.XXXVII.

How the temple gates in a wonderful manner opened of themselves.