Le Quart Livre

One June, on the feast day of Vesta, Pantagruel takes leave of his father Gargantua in the port of Thalassa and sets sail with his entire company—Panurge, Friar John of the Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnastes, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalim, and the great traveler Xenomanes, crosser of perilous ways. Twelve ships accompany them, each bearing on its stern some drinking vessel as an ensign: an antique lantern, a porcelain goblet, an emerald pitcher, an ebony funnel, an ivy cup beaten with gold, so much so that whoever sees them pass immediately judges that these travelers are all good men and drinkers, and that the voyage will proceed in mirth and perfect health. They sing the psalm of David, set the tables on the deck, drink to everyone's health, and no one throws up or suffers stomach upset. The pilot Jamet Brayer sets course for Cathay in Upper India, where the oracle of the Divine Bottle Bacbuc is located, not by the ordinary Portuguese route around Africa, but by winding beneath the North Star, a route that allows them to achieve in under four months what others would take three years to complete.

On the fourth day, they discover the island of Medamothi—Nowhere in Greek—beautiful to the eye and pleasant, where great fairs are held. There, Friar John buys two rare paintings, Panurge a large painting of the work of Philomela, Epistemon a picture of Plato's Ideas and Epicurus's Atoms, and Pantagruel acquires the life and deeds of Achilles in seventy-eight pieces of high-warp tapestry, three young unicorns, and a Scythian tarand, an animal that changes color according to what approaches it. One of Gargantua's ships arrives, bearing letters from father to son and a carrier pigeon for urgent news: a white ribbon is tied to its feet, a sign of prosperity, and the bird traverses in two hours what the ship took three days to sail. Pantagruel writes back to his father, sends him the tarand, the unicorns, and the tapestries, and then sets sail once more.

On the fifth day, a merchant ship of Saintongeais returning from Lanternland informs them that the general chapter of the Lanterns will soon be held, and that should they arrive in time, they will see fair and joyous company. But it is upon this ship that Panurge falls into a dispute with a merchant from Taillebourg named Dindenault, who mocks him for his spectacles and his missing codpiece. Panurge, after a feigned reconciliation, devoutly begs the merchant to sell him one of his sheep. A prodigious haggling ensues: Dindenault boasts of his beasts as the great-wooled sheep from which Jason took the Golden Fleece, sheep whose urine makes wheat grow, whose buried horns yield the best asparagus in the world, whose guts would make violin strings as expensive as those of Munich, whose heel bones could serve for the royal game of tali where Augustus won more than fifty thousand crowns. Panurge finally pays, selects the finest sheep from the flock, carries it crying and bleating—and throws it straight into the sea. All the other sheep, following the nature of their kind which is to always follow the leader, jump one by one into the waves. The merchant, grasping a large ram to hold it back, is dragged overboard with it and drowns, and his shepherds likewise. Panurge, standing by the galley fire, holding an oar not to help them but to prevent them from climbing back up, eloquently preaches to them the miseries of this world and the bliss of the afterlife, promising each a beautiful cenotaph at the summit of Mount Cenis.

They next pass Ennasin, the Island of Alliances, where all the inhabitants have noses shaped like the ace of clubs and call themselves relatives without being father or mother, brother or sister, but through burlesque kinships: one calls his wife "my lean one," she calls him "my porpoise"; a man says to a girl "good day, my currycomb," she replies "good gift, my fallow horse"; another greets his "my hatchet," she answers "my handle"; a well-combed doctor says to a damsel "much thanks, good mien," she replies "great to you, bad hand." There, a soft pear is married to a young cheese with downy mold, an old boot to a supple buskin. Pantagruel sees everything, hears everything, and at these words is ready to lose his composure.

Then comes the island of Cheli, ruled by the good King Panigon, who receives them magnificently, and where Friar John slips away to the kitchens, knowing the customs and ceremonies of the cooking-pots better than all the claptrap of bowing and scraping to ladies. Friar John recounts how a monk from Amiens named Bernard Lardon, visiting Florence, marveled at only one thing: in all that city, not a single cookshop, whereas in Amiens, in a shorter distance, he could count more than fourteen, antique and aromatic.

They sail along Procuration, a country all blotted and blurred, populated by Catchpoles who earn their living by being beaten. For when a monk or a usurer bears a grudge against some gentleman, he sends a Catchpole to summon and outrage him until the gentleman thrashes him—and the Catchpole thus earns his wages and reparations. Panurge then recounts the ruse of the Lord of Basché, who found the remedy: every time a Catchpole comes to serve a writ, a betrothal is simulated, and under the guise of dealing the ritual wedding blows, the Catchpole is battered with heavy ermine-lined gauntlets. The first leaves with a black eye, eight bruised ribs, a caved-in breastbone, and his lower jaw in three pieces. The second is so well-treated that blood pours from his mouth, nose, ears, and eyes. Basché then distributes silver cups, flasks, baskets, and sweetmeats to all his people, and doubles their wages. Since then, the "weddings of Basché" has become a proverb.

Further on, beyond the island of Procuration, the fleet endures a terrible storm. The sea swells, the waves crash, the wind howls in the rigging. Panurge, paralyzed with fear, laments, calls upon all the saints of paradise, makes absurd vows, complains of seasickness, while Friar John, tucking up his frock, lends a hand to the sailors, hauling the ropes, pumping the water, and steering the helm. Pantagruel, holding the mainmast in his embrace, prays to God. The storm rages on, formidable, and Panurge never stops whining and weeping, invoking his imminent death, longing for his dinner and dry land, while the others toil. When the calm finally returns and they approach port, Panurge suddenly recovers all his courage, commands the sailors as if he had done everything, and boasts of being the bravest of the company. Friar John mocks him without mercy.

After the tempest, they land on the island of the Macreons, where an old Macrobian explains to them that the surrounding dark forests are inhabited by demons and heroes, and that when one of them dies, all of nature is thrown into turmoil with storms, plagues, and prodigies. Pantagruel meditates on the death of heroes and great spirits, and it is understood that the storm they have just weathered perhaps signaled the passing of some illustrious soul.

They next encounter the monstrous Physeter, a gigantic whale that spouts columns of water and threatens to swallow the fleet. Pantagruel rises, seizes his javelins, and hurls them with prodigious skill, pinning the beast like a fighting bull. Friar John, the cooks, and the entire crew finish off the monster, dragging it onto the shore of the neighboring island to butcher it. It is a Homeric battle played as farce, where the Physeter's blubber splatters everyone and Pantagruel's javelins stick into the beast's skull like horns.

They then pass by Sneaking-Island, the domain of Shrovetide, an allegorical monster whose anatomy is described with delirious minutiae: his toes are like an organ, his belly like a baldric, his ribs like a spinning wheel, and he eats only salted herring and dried fish. He is Lent in person, the enemy of Mardi Gras and the Chitterlings. On Wild Island, as it happens, the warrior Chitterlings mistake Pantagruel's fleet for allies of Shrovetide and draw themselves up for battle. The clash ensues, furious and grotesque; Friar John, enclosed within a giant wooden sow, bursts out with his cooks armed with spits and larding pins, hacking the Chitterlings to pieces. From the sky then descends a great winged Mardi Gras, who drops mustard on the wounded Chitterlings, and peace is made. The queen of the Chitterlings, Niphleseth, invites Pantagruel to a feast of reconciliation.

They arrive next at the island of Ruach, whose inhabitants live on nothing but wind, eat and drink nothing but wind, and die of dropsy and flatulence. Then comes the island of the Pope-Figs, wretched inhabitants formerly punished for having made the fig at the pope's portrait, reduced to servitude and battered by hail. And above all, the island of the Papimanes, fanatical worshippers of the pope whom they call their God on earth, governed by Bishop Homenaz who dreams only of Decretals, shows Pantagruel the pope's portrait as a sacred relic, and delivers an ecstatic sermon on the omnipotence of the Decretals, which make gold rain down, heal the sick, and save souls. Pantagruel and his companions listen politely, but Panurge swears he does not believe a word of it, and Friar John struggles to suppress his laughter.

After the Papimanes, their route leads them toward increasingly strange islands. They pass the island of Chaneph where no one eats because everyone fasts, then the island of Ganabin populated by thieves. One evening, on the open sea, the pilot Xenomanes signals for silence: voices, cries, neighing, and the clash of weapons are heard in the air, but no one is seen. Pantagruel guesses that these are frozen words, words that were spoken the previous winter during a great battle on the frozen sea, and which, trapped in the ice, are now melting in the spring sun. He gathers handfuls of them on the deck: they are of all colors, red, green, golden, azure. They are warmed between the palms and begin to sound, some like drums and trumpets of war, others like the clatter of arms, and still others like barbarous words in an unknown tongue. Panurge asks to buy a few, but Pantagruel replies that it is foolish to sell words, for selling words is what lawyers do. Friar John throws a handful on the deck, and they all burst together in a joyous and terrible din. Panurge begs them to leave, for he is afraid.

Finally, in the latter chapters, they make a stop at the home of Master Gaster, the first Master of Arts in the world, who dwells on an island with a mountain resembling Mount Parnassus. Gaster is the Belly, a lord without ears who hears nothing, who speaks only in signs, but whom everyone obeys, for it is hunger that invented all arts, all machines, all navigations, all wars. Around him swarm the Engastrimythes and the Gastrolaters, who sacrifice all kinds of victuals to him as to a god in endless litanies of dishes. Pantagruel observes these idolaters of the belly with disgust, and compares Gaster to Mardi Gras. But Gaster himself is neither god nor king: he is necessity, he is nature, he is the mute engine of all human industry.

The final chapters offer no conclusion: after the mute reign of Gaster, the ship skirts the island of Chaneph, a land of hypocrites and bigots, where the wind drops and everyone, idle in the dead calm, sinks into reverie while Pantagruel sleeps. Then they pass off the coast of Ganabin, a den of thieves, and Friar John has a cannon fired in honor of the Muses—but Panurge, terrified by the blast, cowers in the hold believing himself dead, and puts on the most genuine display of fright in the entire book before recovering, his fear passed, his talkative swagger. It is there, without having reached the oracle of the Divine Bottle toward which the fleet still sails, that the Fourth Book abruptly ends—leaving the prow turned toward a horizon that only the Fifth Book, published well after Rabelais's death and of disputed authenticity, will claim to cross.