第191章

He inverted his eyelids upwards, wrenched his jaws from the right to the left side, and drew forth his tongue half out of his mouth. This done, he posited his left hand wholly open, the mid-finger wholly excepted, which was perpendicularly placed upon the palm thereof, and set it just in the room where his codpiece had been. Then did he keep his right hand altogether shut up in a fist, save only the thumb, which he straight turned backwards directly under the right armpit, and settled it afterwards on that most eminent part of the buttocks which the Arabs call the Al-Katim.

Suddenly thereafter he made this interchange: he held his right hand after the manner of the left, and posited it on the place wherein his codpiece sometime was, and retaining his left hand in the form and fashion of the right, he placed it upon his Al-Katim. This altering of hands did he reiterate nine several times; at the last whereof he reseated his eyelids into their own first natural position. Then doing the like also with his jaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon Goatsnose, diddering and shivering his chaps, as apes use to do nowadays, and rabbits, whilst, almost starved with hunger, they are eating oats in the sheaf.

Then was it that Goatsnose, lifting up into the air his right hand wholly open and displayed, put the thumb thereof, even close unto its first articulation, between the two third joints of the middle and ring fingers, pressing about the said thumb thereof very hard with them both, and, whilst the remanent joints were contracted and shrunk in towards the wrist, he stretched forth with as much straightness as he could the fore and little fingers. That hand thus framed and disposed of he laid and posited upon Panurge's navel, moving withal continually the aforesaid thumb, and bearing up, supporting, or under-propping that hand upon the above-specified fore and little fingers, as upon two legs. Thereafter did he make in this posture his hand by little and little, and by degrees and pauses, successively to mount from athwart the belly to the stomach, from whence he made it to ascend to the breast, even upwards to Panurge's neck, still gaining ground, till, having reached his chin, he had put within the concave of his mouth his afore-mentioned thumb; then fiercely brandishing the whole hand, which he made to rub and grate against his nose, he heaved it further up, and made the fashion as if with the thumb thereof he would have put out his eyes. With this Panurge grew a little angry, and went about to withdraw and rid himself from this ruggedly untoward dumb devil.

But Goatsnose in the meantime, prosecuting the intended purpose of his prognosticatory response, touched very rudely, with the above-mentioned shaking thumb, now his eyes, then his forehead, and after that the borders and corners of his cap. At last Panurge cried out, saying, Before God, master fool, if you do not let me alone, or that you will presume to vex me any more, you shall receive from the best hand I have a mask wherewith to cover your rascally scroundrel face, you paltry shitten varlet. Then said Friar John, He is deaf, and doth not understand what thou sayest unto him.

Bulliballock, make sign to him of a hail of fisticuffs upon the muzzle.

What the devil, quoth Panurge, means this busy restless fellow? What is it that this polypragmonetic ardelion to all the fiends of hell doth aim at?

He hath almost thrust out mine eyes, as if he had been to poach them in a skillet with butter and eggs. By God, da jurandi, I will feast you with flirts and raps on the snout, interlarded with a double row of bobs and finger-fillipings! Then did he leave him in giving him by way of salvo a volley of farts for his farewell. Goatsnose, perceiving Panurge thus to slip away from him, got before him, and, by mere strength enforcing him to stand, made this sign unto him. He let fall his right arm toward his knee on the same side as low as he could, and, raising all the fingers of that hand into a close fist, passed his dexter thumb betwixt the foremost and mid fingers thereto belonging. Then scrubbing and swingeing a little with his left hand alongst and upon the uppermost in the very bough of the elbow of the said dexter arm, the whole cubit thereof, by leisure, fair and softly, at these thumpatory warnings, did raise and elevate itself even to the elbow, and above it; on a sudden did he then let it fall down as low as before, and after that, at certain intervals and such spaces of time, raising and abasing it, he made a show thereof to Panurge. This so incensed Panurge that he forthwith lifted his hand to have stricken him the dumb roister and given him a sound whirret on the ear, but that the respect and reverence which he carried to the presence of Pantagruel restrained his choler and kept his fury within bounds and limits. Then said Pantagruel, If the bare signs now vex and trouble you, how much more grievously will you be perplexed and disquieted with the real things which by them are represented and signified! All truths agree and are consonant with one another. This dumb fellow prophesieth and foretelleth that you will be married, cuckolded, beaten, and robbed. As for the marriage, quoth Panurge, I yield thereto, and acknowledge the verity of that point of his prediction; as for the rest, I utterly abjure and deny it: and believe, sir, I beseech you, if it may please you so to do, that in the matter of wives and horses never any man was predestinated to a better fortune than I.