"There is as yet another point which you have not at all considered on; yet it is the knot of the matter. He put the bottle in my hand and restored it me again. How interpret you that passage? What is the meaning of that?"

"He possibly," quoth Pantagruel, "signifieth thereby, that your wife will be a drunkard."

"Quite otherwise," said Panurge; "for the bottle was empty. I swear to you, by the backbone of St Fiacre in Brie, that our wise fool Triboulet referreth me to the bottle. Therefore do I renew afresh the first vow which I made, and here in your presence make oath by Styx and Acheron, to carry still spectacles in my cap until upon the enterprise in hand I obtain an answer from the Divine Bottle. I know a prudent gentleman, a friend of mine, who knoweth the land, country, and place where is its temple and oracle. He will guide us thither safely. Let us go together, I beseech you. I will be to you an Achates, a Damis, a companion in the whole voyage. I have of a long time known you to be a lover of peregrination, desirous still to learn, and still to see. We shall see wonderful things, believe me."

before we enter upon this long journey, full of hazards, full of dangers

"What dangers?" asked Panurge, interrupting him. "Dangers fly from me whithersoever I go,

seven leagues around, as before the sovereign the magistrate is eclipsed; or as darkness vanishes at the coming of the sun; or as sicknesses did suddenly depart at the approach of the body of St Martin at Quande."

"Nevertheless," said Pantagruel, "before we set forward, some few points are to be expedited. First let us send back Triboulet to Blois." Which was instantly done, after that Pantagruel had given him a frieze coat. "Secondly, we must take counsel and leave of the king my father. And lastly, it is most needful and expedient for us, that we search for and find out some Sibyl for guide and interpreter."

To this Panurge made answer, that his friend Xenomanes would abundantly suffice; and that, furthermore, in passing through Lantern - land, they should take some learned and useful Lantern, who would be to them in their voyage what the Sibyl was to Æneas, in his descent to the Elysian fields.

"I prognosticate," said Pantagruel, "that by the way we shall engender no melancholy. I clearly perceive it already. The only thing that vexeth me is, that I do not speak the Lantern language."

"I will," answered Panurge, " speak for you all. I understand it every whit as well as I do mine own maternal tongue; I have been no less used to it than to the vulgar French."

[Everything else having now been tried and failed, there remains only the oracle of the Divine Bottle, which it is now resolved upon consulting. "It can be reached by a long and perilous voyage in unknown seas and among islands little visited. The dangers of the expedition make it the more attractive to Pantagruel. That great traveller, Xenomanes, will act as their guide and interpreter. Epistemon, Carpalim, Eusthenes (Knowledge, Dexterity, Strength) will accompany the party. An immense fleet is gathered at St Malo, although at the beginning of the work we were supposed to be in Dipsodie, far beyond the Cape of Good Hope. The ships are laden with every kind of provision." Especially there is provided good store of the marvellous herb Pantagruelion or hemp.]

THE HERB PANTAGRUELION.

The herb Pantagruelion hath a little root, somewhat hard, roundish, terminating in an obtuse point, and is never more than a cubit deep in the ground. From the root thereof proceedeth the stalk, round, cane-like, green without, whitish within, hollow like. the stem of smyrnium, olus atrum, beans, and gentian; woody, straight, easy to be broken, notched a little in form of a column lightly striated, full of fibres, in which consisteth all the dignity of a herb, especially in the part called mesa, as one would say the mean; and in that other, which is called mylasea. Its height is commonly five or six feet. Yet sometimes it doth surpass the length of a lance

-namely, when it meeteth with a sweet, easy, warm, wet soil,-as is Olone, and that of Rosea, near Preneste in Sabinia, and that it want not for rain enough about the time of the summer solstice. The plant every year perisheth-not being a durable tree, either in the trunk, root, bark, or boughs.

From the stalk there issue forth several large and great branches, whose leaves, three times as long as they are broad, are always green, rough like the Orcanet, or Spanish Bugloss, hard, cut round about like a sickle, like betony, and ending in a point like the Macedonian pike, or like a surgeon's lancet. The shape of the leaves is not much different from that of the leaves of the ashtree, or of agrimony, and so much like the Eupatorium, that many skilful herbalists have called it the Domestic Eupatorium, and the Eupatorium Wild Pantagruelion. These leaves are at distances disposed around the stalk, by number in every rank either of five or seven. Nature hath so highly cherished this plant, that she hath endowed it in its leaves with these two odd numbers, divine and mysterious. The smell thereof is somewhat strong, and not pleasing to delicate noses. The seed mounteth up to the top of the stalk, and a little below it.

This is a numerous herb: for there is no less abundance of it than of any other herb whatsoIt is either spherical, oblong, rhomboidal,

ever.

black, bright-coloured, tawny, hard, mantled with a fragile coat, delicious to all singing birds, such as linnets, goldfinches, larks, canary birds, yellowhammers, and others. And although of old, amongst the Greeks, there was certain kind of fritters, buns, and tarts made thereof, which they ate for daintiness after supper, to make the wine relish the better; yet is it of a difficult concoction, injurious to the stomach, engendereth bad blood, and by its exorbitant heat shocketh the brain and filleth the head with grievous and noisome vapours. And as in divers plants there are two sexes, male and female, which we see in laurels, palms, cypresses, oaks, holms, asphodel, mandrake, fern, the agaric, birthwort, turpentine, penny-royal, peony, and others, even so in this herb there is a male which beareth no flower at all, yet aboundeth in seed, and a female which hath great store of little whitish flowers; nor doth it carry in it seed of any worth at all. It hath also a larger leaf, softer than that of the male, nor doth it grow to so great a height. This Pantagruelion is to be sown at the first coming of the swallows, and is to be plucked out of the ground when the grasshoppers begin to be a little hoarse.

The herb Pantagruelion, under the autumnal equinox, is prepared several ways, according to the fancy of the people and diversity of the climate. The first instruction of Pantagruel was, to divest the stalk of