THE WORLD IN PANTAGRUEL'S MOUTH
683
after page, Dindenault cries up his wares, meanwhile reverting even
more markedly to the insulting tone he had first taken with Panurge,
whom, with a mixture of suspicion, impertinence, joviality, and con–
descension, he treats as a fool or a swindler wholly unworthy of such
fine wares. Panurge, on the other hand, now remains calm and polite,
merely repeating his request for a sheep. Finally, at the urging of the
by-standers, Dindenault names an exorbitant price; when Panurge
warns him that many a man has fared ill from trying to get rich too
fast, Dindenault flies into a rage and begins cursing him. Very well,
says Panurge; then counts out the money, chooses a fine fat wether,
and while Dindenault is still reviling him, he suddenly throws the
wether into the sea. The whole flock jumps overboard after it; the
despairing Dindenault tries in vain to hold them back; a powerful
ram drags him overboard, and he drowns in the same situation in
which Ulysses once fled from Polyphemus' cave; his shepherds and
herdsmen are pulled overboard in the same fashion. Panurge picks up
a long oar and pushes away those who are trying to swim back to the
ship, meanwhile treating the drowning men to a splendid oration on
the joys of eternal life and the miseries of life in this world.
So
the
joke ends grimly, and even rather frighteningly, if one considers the
intensity of the ever-cheerful Pantagruel's urge for vengeance. Yet it
remains a joke, which Rabelais has, as usual, stuffed with the most
various and grotesque erudition, this time on the subject of sheep-–
their wool, their hides, their intestines, their flesh, and all their other
parts-and adorned as usual with mythology, medicine, and strange
alchemical lore. Yet, this time, the center of interest does not lie in
the multifarious outpouring of the ideas which come to Dindenault in
his praise of sheep, it lies in the copious portrait which he gives of
his own character, and which accounts for the manner of his end; he
is taken in and he perishes because he cannot adjust himself, cannot
change himself, but instead, in his blind folly and vaingloriousness,
runs straight forward, like Picrochole or the
leoucr limousin,
his one–
track mind incapable of registering his surroundings; it does not oc–
cur to him that Panurge may be sharper than himself, that he might
sacrifice his money for revenge. Thick-headedness, inability to ad–
just, one-track arrogance which blinds a man to the complexity of
the real situation, are depravity to Rabelais. This is the form of
stupidity he mocks and pursues.
