CHAPTER 4.XII.
How Pantagruel passed by the land of Pettifogging, and of the strange way of living among the Catchpoles.
Steering our course forwards the next day, we passed through Pettifogging, a country all blurred and blotted, so that I could hardly tell what to make on't.

There we saw some pettifoggers and catchpoles, rogues that will hang their father for a groat.

They neither invited us to eat or drink; but, with a multiplied train of scrapes and cringes, said they were all at our service for the Legem pone.
One of our droggermen related to Pantagruel their strange way of living, diametrically opposed to that of our modern Romans; for at Rome a world of folks get an honest livelihood by poisoning, drubbing, lambasting, stabbing, and murthering; but the catchpoles earn theirs by being thrashed; so that if they were long without a tight lambasting, the poor dogs with their wives and children would be starved.

This is just, quoth Panurge, like those who, as Galen tells us, cannot erect the cavernous nerve towards the equinoctial circle unless they are soundly flogged.

By St.Patrick's slipper, whoever should jerk me so, would soon, instead of setting me right, throw me off the saddle, in the devil's name.
The way is this, said the interpreter.