694
PARnSAN REVIEW
3
Meanwhile the merchant was saying to his shepherds: Ah! how well the
knave could choose him out a ram; the whoreson has skill in cattle. Truly, aye
really and truly, I reserved that very one for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing
his disposition: for he is by nature overjoyed and all agog when he holds a
good-sized handsome shoulder of mutton, like a left-handed racket, in one hand,
with a good sharp carver in the other; God wot how he fences with it then!
(Ibid.)
• On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done; for my
part I cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it; Panurge, without any
further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the middle of the sea,
crying and bleating. Upon this all the other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating
in the same tone, made all the haste they could to leap and plunge into the sea
after him, one behind t'other, and great was the throng who should leap in first
after their leader.
It
was impossible to hinder them:
~
for you know that it is the nature of sheep always to follow the first, where–
soever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib. 9 De Hist. Anima!., mark them for the
most silly and foolish animals in the world.
(Ibid.)
