How Pantagruel went ashore at the dwelling of Gaster, the first master of arts in the world.

That day Pantagruel went ashore in an island which, for situation and governor, may be said not have its fellow. When you just come into it, you find it rugged, craggy, and barren, unpleasant to the eye, painful to the feet, and almost as inaccessible as the mountain of Dauphine, which is somewhat like a toadstool, and was never climbed as any can remember by any but Doyac, who had the charge of King Charles the Eighth’s train of artillery.

This same Doyac with strange tools and engines gained that mountain’s top, and there he found an old ram. It puzzled many a wise head to guess how it got thither. Some said that some eagle or great horncoot, having carried it thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away and saved itself among the bushes.

As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true garden of Eden, or earthly paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary and keep such a pother.

As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Arete — that is as much as to say, virtue — described by Hesiod. This, however, with submission to better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first master of arts in this world. For, if you believe that fire is the great master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself; alas! Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old, you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist’s sentence, that affirms Master Gaster to be the master of all arts, is true. With him peacefully resided old goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio.

We were all obliged to pay our homage and swear allegiance to that mighty sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible; you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything.

He does not hear; and as the Egyptians said that Harpocrates, the god of silence, named Sigalion in Greek, was astome, that is, without a mouth, so Gaster was created without ears, even like the image of Jupiter in Candia.

He only speaks by signs, but those signs are more readily obeyed by everyone than the statutes of senates or commands of monarchs. Neither will he admit the least let or delay in his summons. You say that when a lion roars all the beasts at a considerable distance round about, as far as his roar can be heard, are seized with a shivering. This is written,............