Three good giants

It would really be of no use to tell the names of all the Giants who came between Hurtali and our merry old King Grandgousier. Some of them you already know. Long after Hurtali came Goliath, the Giant, whom young David slew with his sling and stone; Briareus, the Greek Giant of a hundred hands; King Porus, the Indian Giant, who fought with Alexander, and was defeated by him; and the famous Giant Bruyer, slain by Ogier the Dane, Peer of France. There are so many of them that I would soon grow tired of giving, and you of hearing, even their names. All that we care about knowing is that, in a straight line from Hurtali, the Giant who rode on the Blessed Ark, the fifty-fourth was GRANDGOUSIER, who was the father of GARGANTUA, who, in his turn, was the father of PANTAGRUEL.

These are the three Giants whose story I am about to tell, two of whom will prove more wonderful heroes than are to be read of either in ancient or modern history.

CHAPTER II. GARGANTUA IS BORN.

KING GRANDGOUSIER — the fifty-seventh in a straight line from Chalbroth, the first Giant — was a jovial King in his day. Although a Giant, he was the pink of politeness and kindly feeling. His whole life was one continual dinner. He was very fond of his own ease, this jovial King, but he also loved to make those around him happy. He kept open house, and the sun never rose on a day when there was not some high lord or some poor pilgrim at his table, eating and drinking of his best. He had a great horror of seeing people thirsty around him. 'There is too much good wine flowing in my kingdom for anybody to feel thirsty. Everybody should drink before he is dry," he was fond of saying. So one of the main duties of his Chief Butler Turelupin was to make all the servants, all comers and goers, drink before they were dry. It was said to take eighteen hundred pipes of wine yearly to do this. He never was known to look at the clothes a guest wore, — oh, no, not he, that good, hearty old King Grandgousier ! And it was a pretty sight to see, whenever a guest or a friend wished to say anything privately, how tenderly the old Giant would pick him up, and put him on his knee, and bend his great head and listen ever so carefully to try and find out what he had to say. His head was lifted so far above the ground that, otherwise, one would have had to shout out loud enough for all in the palace to hear.

King Grandgousier was very fond of his wine, and could drink, — being a giant, — at a single meal, more than a dozen common men could manage to swallow at a dozen meals each. 1 He was also very fond of salt meat. He never failed to have on hand a good supply of French hams, from Mayence and Bayonne, — the finest known in those days, —

KING GRANDGOUSIER KEEPS OPEK HOUSE

superb smoked beef-tongues; an abundance of chitterlings, when in season, and salt beef, with mustard to spice the whole. All these fine things were reinforced by sausages from Bigorre, Longaulnay, and Rouargue,—the very best in all France. But there was something which King Grandgousier loved above everything in the way of eating, and that was tripes. So fond was he of them that he had ordered all the royal meadows to be searched, and all the fat beeves

1 Children must remember that times have changed for the better since the wild days of these old giants. To drink so hard and long that a man, from too much wine, would fall under the table and lie there because not able to move, was looked upon as a virtue then. Now, in our happier days, we know it to be a virtue for a man to keep himself sober, and a shame for him to be seen drunk grazing in the royal meadows, three hundred and sixty-seven thousand and fourteen of them, to be killed, so that there might be plenty of powdered beef to flavor the royal wine for the season. Then he had the Royal Herald, with great flourish of trumpets, to name a day on which all his neighbors — brave fellows and good players at nine-pins • —were to join him in a Great Feast of Tripes.

THE KING AOT> QUEEN LOVE TRIPES

King Grandgousier had a fair and stately wife named Gargamelle. She was a daughter of the King of the Parpaillons, and was herself a giantess, but not quite so tall as her husband. Grandgousier and Gargamelle dearly loved one another, and all that they wanted in this world was a son to bear the father's name, and be King after him. Queen Gargamelle liked to be in the open air, and see games of ninepins and ball and leap-frog played by nimble men and women. And Grandgousier, at such games, was always found seated at her side, like a good husband, seeming to enjoy them as much as she did.

At last, one fine day, a little boy was born to them.