CHAPTER 3.XI.
How Pantagruel showeth the trial of one's fortune by the throwing of dice to be unlawful.
It would be sooner done, quoth Panurge, and more expeditely, if we should try the matter at the chance of three fair dice.

Quoth Pantagruel, That sort of lottery is deceitful, abusive, illicitous, and exceedingly scandalous.

Never trust in it.

The accursed book of the Recreation of Dice was a great while ago excogitated in Achaia, near Bourre, by that ancient enemy of mankind, the infernal calumniator, who, before the statue or massive image of the Bourraic Hercules, did of old, and doth in several places of the world as yet, make many simple souls to err and fall into his snares.

You know how my father Gargantua hath forbidden it over all his kingdoms and dominions; how he hath caused burn the moulds and draughts thereof, and altogether suppressed, abolished, driven forth, and cast it out of the land, as a most dangerous plague and infection to any well-polished state or commonwealth.