676
PARTISAN REVIEW
cities from a distance) as he is to find him quietly planting cabbages,
as if they were both in Touraine. So he asks him,
((tout esbahy":
Friend, what are you doing here? and receives a complacent,
tongue-in-cheek answer such as he might well have got from a
Tourangeau peasant too, of the type which many of Rabelais' char–
acters often represent themselves to be:
Ie plante, dist-il, des choulx.
It
reminds me of a small boy's remark which I once overheard; he
was using the telephone for the first time, so that his grandmother,
who lived in another town, could hear his voice; and, asked, "And
what are you doing, lad?" proudly and factually answered, "I'm tele–
phoning." Here the case is slightly different: the peasant is not only
naive and limited, he also has the rather reserved_humor which is –
extremely French and particularly characteristic of Rabelais. He has
a very good notion that the stranger is from that other world of
which he has heard rumors; but he pretends to notice nothing and
answers the second question, which is also purely an exclamation of
astonishment (approximately : But why? How come?), as naively as
he had the first, with a juicy peasant figure of speech which signifies
that he is not rich; he earns his living from his cabbages, which he sells
in the neighboring city. Now at last the visitor begins to grasp the
situation: Jesus, he exclaims, this is an entirely new world! No, it is
not new, says the peasant, but people say there's a new land out there
where they have a sun and moon and all sorts of fine things; but
this land here is older.-The fellow talks of the "new world" as people
in Touraine or anywhere in Western or Central Europe might have
spoken of the then newly discovered lands, of America or India; but
he is cunning enough to suspect that the stranger is an inhabitant of
that other world, for he reassures him as to the people in the city:
They are good Christians and will not treat you badly; whereby he of
course assumes, and in this case he is right, that the designation "good
Christians" will serve as a reassuring guarantee for the stranger too.
In short, this inhabitant of the outskirts of Aspharage behaves just as
his congener in Touraine would have done; and things continue in
the same fashion, frequently interrupted by grotesque explanations,
which likewise maintain no sort of proportion; for when Pantagruel
opens his mouth, which contains so many kingdoms and cities, the
dimensions of the opening ought not to be easily confused with a
pigeon-house. But the theme "everything just as at home" persists
