How Friar John joined with the cooks to fight the Chitterlings.

Friar John seeing these furious Chitterlings thus boldly march up, said to Pantagruel, Here will be a rare battle of hobby-horses, a pretty kind of puppet-show fight, for aught I see. Oh! what a mighty honour and wonderful glory will attend our victory! I would have you only be a bare spectator of this fight, and for anything else leave me and my men to deal with them. What men? said Pantagruel. Matter of breviary, replied Friar John. How came Potiphar, who was head-cook of Pharaoh’s kitchens, he that bought Joseph, and whom the said Joseph might have made a cuckold if he had not been a Joseph; how came he, I say, to be made general of all the horse in the kingdom of Egypt? Why was Nabuzardan, King Nebuchadnezzar’s head-cook, chosen to the exclusion of all other captains to besiege and destroy Jerusalem? I hear you, replied Pantagruel. By St. Christopher’s whiskers, said Friar John, I dare lay a wager that it was because they had formerly engaged Chitterlings, or men as little valued; whom to rout, conquer, and destroy, cooks are without comparison more fit than cuirassiers and gendarmes armed at all points, or all the horse and foot in the world.

You put me in mind, said Pantagruel, of what is written amongst the facetious and merry sayings of Cicero. During the more than civil wars between Caesar and Pompey, though he was much courted by the first, he naturally leaned more to the side of the latter. Now one day hearing that the Pompeians in a certain rencontre had lost a great many men, he took a fancy to visit their camp. ............