CHAPTER 1.XVII.
How Gargantua paid his welcome to the Parisians, and how he took away the great bells of Our Lady's Church.
Some few days after that they had refreshed themselves, he went to see the city, and was beheld of everybody there with great admiration; for the people of Paris are so sottish, so badot, so foolish and fond by nature, that a juggler, a carrier of indulgences, a sumpter-horse, or mule with cymbals or tinkling bells, a blind fiddler in the middle of a cross lane, shall draw a greater confluence of people together than an evangelical preacher.

And they pressed so hard upon him that he was constrained to rest himself upon the towers of Our Lady's Church.

At which place, seeing so many about him, he said with a loud voice, I believe that these buzzards will have me to pay them here my welcome hither, and my Proficiat.

It is but good reason.

I will now give them their wine, but it shall be only in sport.