old father grandgousier had a very large body of his own; and, after the fashion of all good-natured giants that have ever lived, when he was pleased he was hugely pleased. so it happened that, when his friends came around him to drink his good wine, and eat his rich dinners, and to tell him how bright his boy was, he shook all over with mighty laughter. "ho! ho! ho! ho!" he shouted, till the big strong bottles that stood on his table jingled, and the very rafters of the dining-hall seemed to laugh with them.
"you say that my little gargantua is quick? ho! ho! now, my good lords, philip of macedon had a son who was quick too. yes, they said that he was as quick as that," snapping his fingers together so that they went cric-crac like a pistol shot. "you have heard of the lad, and that wild bucephalus of his? bah! i am sure my little brigand upstairs would never have waited to turn the head of bucephalus to the sun before riding him, but would have mounted and ridden him before all the people, with his tail turned straight to the sun, and his shadow thrown plain before him! you have decided me, my friends. gargantua is already five years old. he is only a baby; but he is a giant's child with more wit than age,—that makes a difference. i have been thinking seriously lately; and it is high time that i should give my youngster to some wise man to make him wise according to his capacity."
and this father grandgousier began to do at once. he called, the very next day, upon one of his subjects, worthy master tubal holofernes, a man famed for wisdom the country round, to teach gargantua his a b c's. i am sorry to say that master holofernes seemed, from the first hour, to be just a little afraid of his small pupil, who, although only a baby, could easily have studied his alphabet on his teacher's bald pate, and had to bend his head even to do that. but father grandgousier was, on the whole, well satisfied with his son. gargantua could, after five years and three months, actually recite his alphabet from a to z; then from z to a; then catch it sharply up in the middle, bunching m and n together; naming the letters in fours, in eights, and in twelves, as quickly as you can think, forward and back again, and again, till all the old friends—whose noses, from good living, had become very red, and whose paunches were very big—swore, over their wine, that he was the smartest child of ten years they ever had seen. of course, father grandgousier thought all this something wonderful. he ho-ho'ed and he ha-ha'ed! with great swelling laughter, after the fashion of giants, until he was all out of breath, and his friends had to beg him to stop for fear of choking.
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tubal holofernes.
but father grandgousier could not rest here. he declared that gargantua must now learn latin. the young giant was made, not only to study latin, but to write, besides that, his own books of study in gothic letters, there being no printing-presses in those days.
to learn all this took him thirteen years, six months, and two weeks.
by this time, gargantua had grown so tall that, when called upon to recite, he 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.
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the friend who knew 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!!!"
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 holofernes 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.
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flight of the tutor.
