Bythistime, Garantua had grown so tall tnat » when called to recite » ne could not make his answer heard
by Master Holofernes, who was rather deaf, unless by bending down and whispering it, because his voice was so strong that his ordinary tone would have, at that close distance, broken the drums of the old man's ears. What he thought he needed, therefore, was a writing-desk. It was very hard to find a desk quite suited to him for writing down what he had to say. They hunted near and far for one. At last one was found in the possession of a stunted old giant, living in a cave near by, who all his life had been hoping to grow as tall as King Grandgousier himself. This poor giant had, however, been thrown into despair because he had suddenly stopped growing, and still lacked a dozen feet or so of being as tall as he wanted to be. He gave up the desk he had used so long, with a great sob that shook the mountain in the caves of which he lived. Gargantua, although not full-grown, did not find a desk of seven hundred thousand pounds' weight at all in his way, for it was just suited to his size.
His ink-horn, weighing as much as a ton of merchandise, swung by heavy iron chains from the side of the desk. From it Gargantua, with a pen-holder as large as the great Pillar of Enay, used to write his Latin exercises. Master Holofernes kept him at all this for eighteen years and eleven months, and so thorough did he become that he could recite his Latin exercises by heart, backwards. He went on studying after this some of the harder books for sixteen years and two months, when he had the misfortune of losing his old teacher very suddenly.
One day, unexpectedly, Father Grandgousier called his friends around him, — who had, by this time, gained redder noses and bigger paunches than ever, - to see how strong his son was in Latin. He also invited a friend of his who, he was sure, did know Latin.
Then he shouted out, " Come, my little one, and show these friends of thy father what thou hast learned of Latin. See, here is a gentleman who knows it as he does his breviary. He shall examine thee, and tell us how much thou hast learned under faithful Master Holofernes, whom we all honor."
And the learned friend began on poor Gargantua, and poured on him question after question for six mortal hours. Father Grandgousier, who, by the way, had understood not one word of it all, turned to him at the end triumphantly: —
"Now, good sir, art thou not convinced that my boy knows his Latin ? "
Then, that learned friend, although just a little trembling, to be sure, answered quietly enough : —
" With my Liege's permission, Prince Gargantua does not know any more Latin than Your own Gracious Majesty."
What!
WHAT !!
WHAT!!!
FLIGHT OF THE TUTOR.
roared Father Grandgousier, each time making that very short word longer and louder and fiercer, and jumping to his feet he fairly kicked learned Master Ilolofernes out of the palace ; meanwhile, rolling his eyes around in his rage, and gnashing his teeth in so horrible a way that the noses of his old friends who had sat at his table for sixty years, and more, turned pale for once, through fright; and there were those of the household who said that, as they fled from the dining-room, in terror, even the paunches of these old friends seemed, somehow, to have grown as flat as the royal pancakes they had just been eating.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NEW MASTER FOUND FOR GARGANTUA.
THAT ! not know thy Latin ! After forty-eight years, seven months, and two days ! Then, my little rogue, it is to Paris thou must go."
This is what Grandgousier said to Gargantua just one week after that luckless dinner. I will tell you how it all happened. The first thing the old Kino- did the next morning was to send, post-haste, to his good friend, Don Philip of the Marshes, Viceroy of Papeligosse, who knew Latin, and who had told him, years and years before, that poor Master
Holofernes was nothing but a bit of an old humbug (humbug was not quite the word used at that time, but the meaning was all the same). "Come to me, my friend," he wrote, "thou art always prating of thy Latin scholars. Xow bring one of thy wonders along with thee."
So Don Philip came in great state, as befitted a visit to his King, accompanied by the prettiest, the jauntiest, the sharpest, the politest, the sweetest-voiced little fellow ever seen. Don Philip introduced the curled darling as Master Eudemon, his page.
"Your Majesty sees this child ? " he asked. " He is not yet twelve years old; yet I dare promise that he will prove to Your Majesty, if it be your pleasure, what difference there really is between the old dreamers of the past and the lads of the present."
" So be it," cried the old Giant, gaily, as he put on his glasses, to see the better.
When his eyes first fell on the young page, he swore under his breath — which sounded for all the world like stifled thunder — that he resembled rather "a little angel than a human child." As soon as Eudemon was called to show what he knew, he rose with youthful modesty, and bowed with charming grace to the King, then to his master, and then to Gargantua, who was frowning at him, and wondering within himself what all those pretty ways meant. Then the young page opened in a Latin so good, so pure, and so musical that what he said sounded rather like a speech made by a Gracchus, or a Cicero, or an Emilius, in the old days of Roman glory, than one made by a youth of that day. After a little, Eudemon — cunning rogue that he was ! — began to praise Gargantua to the skies. He spoke first of his young Prince's virtue and good manners; secondly, of his knowledge; thirdly, of his noble birth; fourthly, of his personal beauty ; and fifthly, the little fellow exhorted him so movingly to revere his great father in all things that Gar-gautua was so ashamed at not understanding a word of what he was saying, and at not being able to Latin away as he did, forgetting that a dwarf had no business whatever to criticise a young Giant, that he began to moo-moo like a cow, and to hide his face in his cap without having ever a word to say for himself.
Here it was that Father Grandgousier grew really angry. He praised Eudemon and scolded Gargantua by turns, until at last he fell asleep among all the big bottles that had been emptied during the pretty tale of the learned little angel, which nobody around the table understood but Don Philip of the Marshes and the pretty little angel
himself. It is a bold thing at all times to awake a King without his own orders ; but when that King is a Giant, it is a bolder thing to do than ever. No one dares, for his head, disturb him, and yet, he has to be waked, or else the next morning his sneezes will make all the houses around tumble down, as Giant's colds in the head are just about as big as their bodies. Now, Gargantua being a young Giant himself, was the only one who could venture upon the liberty of waking his Father, and I have already said what he got for his pains : —
"What ! not know thy Latin ! After forty-eight years, seven months, and two days, too ! Then, my little rogue, it is to Paris thou shalt go."
CHAPTER VIII.
GARGANTUA GOES TO PARIS, AND THE BIG MARE THAT TAKES HIM THERE.
THE trip to Paris being settled, the first thing to be agreed on was a horse large enough to carry Gargantua at his ease. There was no trouble here ; for, by good luck, it happened that there had arrived, only a few days before, the most gigantic Mare that had ever eaten hay in the Royal Stables. She had come all the way from Africa, a present from Fay-olles, the fourth king of Numidia. When Father Grandgousier went to look at the Mare, he found her a marvellous animal, indeed. She was as big as six elephants, with her hoofs split into toes. Her ears hung downward like the great ears of the goats of Languedoc. The mare was not alone in her split toes, because history tells us that the steed of Julius Csesar had the self-same toes if he hadn't the ears. But she was alone in her tail! Oh, how mighty that tail was ! It was as big as the Pillar of Saint-Mars near Langes, and just as square. If the boys and girls who are reading this are surprised, they will only have to think of what they have already read of the tails of those Scythian rams which weighed more than thirty pounds each; and of the sheep of Syria, the tails of which were so long and so heavy that they had to be rested on a cart to be carried in comfort. The Mare, in short, was so extraordinary a creature that, on seeing her for the first time, Father Grandgousier could only whistle beneath his breath.