As to the topics of satire and gay curiosity which occupy the lady known as ‘Gyp,’ and M. Hale’vy in his ‘Les Petites Cardinal,’ if you had not exhausted the matter in your ‘Dialogues of Hetairai,’ you would be amused to find the same old traits surviving without a touch of change.  One reads, in Hale’vy’s French, of Madame Cardinal, and, in your Greek, of the mother of Philinna, and marvels that eighteen hundred years have not in one single trifle altered the mould.  Still the old shabby light-loves, the old greed, the old luxury and squalor.  Still the unconquerable superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical ‘bull-roarer’ or ‘turndun.’ (1)

(1)The Greek rombos [transliterated], mentioned by Lucian and Theocritus, was the magical weapon of the Australians—­the turndun.

Yes, Lucian, we are the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and at whom you smiled.  Nay, our very ‘social question’ is not altered.  Do you not write, in ’The Runaways,’ ’The artisans will abandon their workshops, and leave their trades, when they see that, with all the labour that bows their bodies from dawn to dark, they make a petty and starveling pittance, while men that toil not nor spin are floating in Pactolus’?

They begin to see this again as of yore; but whether the end of their vision will be a laughing matter, you, fortunate Lucian, do not need to care.  Hail to you, and farewell!

VII.

To Maitre Francoys Rabelais.

Of the Coming of the Coqcigrues.

Master,—­ In the Boreal and Septentrional lands, turned aside from the noonday and the sun, there dwelt of old (as thou knowest, and as Olaus voucheth) a race of men, brave, strong, nimble, and adventurous, who had no other care but to fight and drink.  There, by reason of the cold (as Virgil witnesseth), men break wine with axes.  To their minds, when once they were dead and gotten to Valhalla, or the place of their Gods, there would be no other pleasure but to swig, tipple, drink, and boose till the coming of that last darkness and Twilight, wherein they, with their deities, should do battle against the enemies of all mankind; which day they rather desired than dreaded.

So chanced it also with Pantagruel and Brother John and their company, after they had once partaken of the secret of the Dive Bouteille.  Thereafter they searched no longer; but, abiding at their ease, were merry, frolic, jolly, gay, glad, and wise; only that they always and ever did expect the awful Coming of the Coqcigrues.  Now concerning the day of that coming, and the nature of them that should come, they knew nothing; and for his part Panurge was all the more adread, as Aristotle testifieth that men (and Panurge above others) most fear that which they know least.  Now it chanced one day, as they sat at meat, with viands rare, dainty, and precious as ever Apicius dreamed of, that there fluttered on the air a faint sound as of sermons, speeches, orations, addresses, discourses, lectures, and the like; whereat Panurge, pricking up his ears, cried, ‘Methinks this wind bloweth from Midlothian,’ and so fell a trembling.