Chapter 34
Chapter 34 of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 5. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 5, by François Rabelais. Translated by Peter-Antony Matou and Sir Thomas Urquhart.
How we arrived at the Oracle of the Bottle Our glorious lantern lighting and directing us to heart's content, we at last arrived at the desired island where was the Oracle of the Bottle. As soon as friend Panurge landed, he nimbly cut a caper with one leg for joy and cried to Pantagruel,
Now we are where we have wished ourselves long ago. This is the place we've been seeking with such toil and labor. He then made a compliment to our lantern, who desired us to be of good cheer, and not to be daunted or dismayed,
whatever we might chance to see. To come to the temple of the holy bottle, we were to go through a large vineyard, in which were all sorts of vines, as the Falernian, Malfoyzian, the Muscadine,
those of Taige, Bonne, Miraval, Orlion, Picardin, Arbois, Cousy, Anjou, Grave, Corsica, Vieronne, Nerac, and others. This vineyard was formerly planted by the good Bacchus, with so great a blessing that it yields leaves, flowers, and fruit all the year round, like the orange trees at Ciron. Our magnificent lantern ordered every one of us to eat three grapes, to put some vine leaves in his shoes, and take a vine branch in his left hand. At the end of the close, we went under an arch, built after the manner of those of the ancients.
The trophies of a toper were curiously carved on it. First, on one side, was to be seen a long train of flagons, leathern bottles, flasks, cans, glass bottles, barrels, nipperkins, pint pots, quart pots, pottles, gallons, and old-fashioned semazes, swinging wooden pots such as those out of which the Germans fill their glasses. These hung on a shady arbor. On another side was store of garlic, onions, shallots, hams, botargos, caviar, biscuits,
neatstongues, old cheese, and such like confits, very artificially interwoven and packed together with vine stalks. On another were a hundred sorts of drinking glasses, cups, cisterns, ewers, false cups, tumblers, bowls, masers, mugs, jugs, goblets, tall boys, and such other bacchic artillery. On the front piece of the triumphal arch, under the zoophore, was the following couplet. You who presume to move this way, get a good lantern, lest you stray.
We took special care of that, cried Pantagruel when he had read them, for there is not a better or a more divine lantern than ours in all Lantern Land. This arch ended at a fine, large, round alley, covered over with the interlaid branches of vines, loaded and adorned with clusters of 500 different colors,
and of as many various shapes. Not natural, but due to the skill of agriculture. Some were golden, others bluish, tawny, azure, white, black, green, purple, streaked with many colors, long, round, triangular, cod-like, hairy, great-headed, and grassy. That pleasant alley ended at three old ivy trees, verdant and all loaden with rings. Our enlightened lantern directed us to make ourselves hats with some of their leaves and cover our heads wholly with them.
which was immediately done. Jupiter's priestess, said Pantagruel, in former days would not like us have walked under this arbor. There was a mystical reason, answered our most perspicuous lantern, that would have hindered her, for had she gone under it,
the wine or the grapes of which tis made, that's the same thing, had been over her head, and then she would have seemed overtop, and mastered by wine, which implies that priests and all persons who devote themselves to the contemplation of divine things ought to keep their minds sedate and calm, and avoid whatever might disturb and discompose their tranquility, which nothing is more apt to do than drunkenness.
You also, continued our lantern, could not come into the holy bottle's presence after you've gone through this arch, did not that noble priestess back book first see your shoes full of vine leaves, which action is diametrically opposite to the other, and signifies that you despise wine, and having mastered it, as it were, tread it underfoot. I am no scholar, quoth Friar John, for which I am heartily sorry, yet I find by my breviary that, in the revelation, a woman was seen with the moon under her feet, which was a most wonderful sight. Now, as Bigot explained it to me, this was to signify that she was not of the nature of other women, for they have all the moon at their heads, and, consequently, their brains are always troubled with a lunacy. This makes me willing to believe what you said, dear Madam Lantern. End of chapter 34. Read by Phineas, Denver, Colorado.
2025.
