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<h2> Chapter 3.III.—How Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers. </h2>
<p>But, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt? At the next ensuing
term of the Greek kalends, answered Panurge, when all the world shall be
content, and that it be your fate to become your own heir. The Lord forbid
that I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not be trusted. Who
leaves not some leaven over night, will hardly have paste the next morning.</p>
<p>Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always
to pray for you, that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a
blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly
with you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you,
he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase
new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a
shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk's earth fill
up his ditch. When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the institution
of the Druids, the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the
funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear
enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, perforce,
they were to die with them for company. Did not they incessantly send up
their supplications to their great god Mercury, as likewise unto Dis, the
father of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in
health? Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to
look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly? For by
those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death.
Believe me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech
Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than
that you should die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than
the arm, and love silver better than their own lives. As it evidently
appeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged
themselves because the price of the corn and wines was fallen by the return
of a gracious season. To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went
on in his discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my
destiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me shrewdly to my plunges,
and have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and
creditors. And yet did I, in this only respect and consideration of being
a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable. For against
the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet,
without having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First
Matter, did I out of nothing become such (a) maker and creator, that I have
created—what?—a gay number of fair and jolly creditors. Nay, creditors,
I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively, are fair and
goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and
an accursed imp of the infernal Old Nick. And there is made—what? Debts.
A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity. Debts, I
say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the
combinations of all the consonants, with each of the vowels heretofore
projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates. To judge of
the perfection of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors is the
readiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical arithmetic.</p>
<p>You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself
environed and surrounded with brigades of creditors—humble, fawning, and
full of their reverences. And whilst I remark that, as I look more
favourably upon and give a cheerfuller countenance to one than to another,
the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first
despatched and the foremost in the date of payment, and he valueth my
smiles at the rate of ready money, it seemeth unto me that I then act and
personate the god of the passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels
and cherubims.</p>
<p>These are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my
parasites, my saluters, my givers of good-morrows, and perpetual orators;
which makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue
described by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first
degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all human creatures seem
to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties
in the way and encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is
easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in
the breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.</p>
<p>Yet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor. To acquire
creditors is not at the disposure of each man's arbitrament. You
nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity. You ask me when I
will be out of debt. Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in
your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not
all my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens
with the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept
together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny
of Adam would very suddenly perish without it. Therefore, perhaps, I do
not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul of the universe,
which, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of
things. In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be
so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a clear
and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if
you please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher
Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor
or creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.</p>
<p>There amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in
disorder. Jupiter, reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn,
will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain
will be like to hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes,
devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements. Saturn, no doubt,
combining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of
confusion.</p>
<p>Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would
scorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he was of old termed in the
Etrurian tongue. For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to
them.</p>
<p>Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing. The
moon will remain bloody and obscure. For to what end should the sun impart
unto her any of his light? He owed her nothing. Nor yet will the sun
shine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because
the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted
nourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the
Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented. There
would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration,
nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself
obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it. Earth
then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will
be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth
will produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will descend
upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there
be in it any summer or harvest. Lucifer will break loose, and issuing
forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned
devils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as
well of the greater as of the lesser nations. Such a world without lending
will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling,
more unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an
hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than that of the plagues of
Douay. Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to
expect aid or succour from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none
will put to their helping hand. Why? He lent no money, there is nothing
due to him. Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his
ruin, or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and
would never thereafter have lent anything. In short, Faith, Hope, and
Charity would be quite banished from such a world—for men are born to
relieve and assist one another; and in their stead should succeed and be
introduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of
all evils, all imprecations, and all miseries. Whereupon you will think,
and that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle. Men
unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon,
Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats,
rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,
pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or
Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such
sort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained
in the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or
tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend. These fellows, I
vow, do I hate with a perfect hatred; and if, conform to the pattern of
this grievous, peevish, and perverse world which lendeth nothing, you
figure and liken the little world, which is man, you will find in him a
terrible justling coil and clutter. The head will not lend the sight of
his eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs will refuse to bear up the
body; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the
members; the heart will be weary of its continual motion for the beating of
the pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will withdraw
the use of their bellows; the liver will desist from convoying any more
blood through the veins for the good of the whole; the bladder will not be
indebted to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally stopped.
The brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall
into a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling from the sinews and motion
from the muscles. Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing
nothing, lending nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would see a more
dangerous conspiration than that which Aesop exposed in his Apologue. Such
a world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish, but perish very
quickly. Were it Aesculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and
the chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight to all the devils of
hell after my money.</p>
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