How in the land of Satin we saw Hearsay, who kept a school of vouching.

We went a little higher up into the country of Tapestry, and saw the Mediterranean Sea open to the right and left down to the very bottom; just as the Red Sea very fairly left its bed at the Arabian Gulf to make a lane for the Jews when they left Egypt.

There I found Triton winding his silver shell instead of a horn, and also Glaucus, Proteus, Nereus, and a thousand other godlings and sea monsters.

I also saw an infinite number of fish of all kinds, dancing, flying, vaulting, fighting, eating, breathing, billing, shoving, milting, spawning, hunting, fishing, skirmishing, lying in ambuscado, making truces, cheapening, bargaining, swearing, and sporting.

In a blind corner we saw Aristotle holding a lantern in the posture in which the hermit uses to be drawn near St. Christopher, watching, prying, thinking, and setting everything down.

Behind him stood a pack of other philosophers, like so many bums by a head-bailiff, as Appian, Heliodorus, Athenaeus, Porphyrius, Pancrates, Arcadian, Numenius, Possidonius, Ovidius, Oppianus, Olympius, Seleucus, Leonides, Agathocles, Theophrastus, Damostratus, Mutianus, Nymphodorus, Aelian, and five hundred other such plodding dons, who were full of business, yet had little to do; like Chrysippus or Aristarchus of Soli, who for eight-and-fifty years together did nothing in the world but examine the state and concerns of bees.

I spied Peter Gilles among these, with a urinal in his hand, narrowly watching the water of those goodly fishes.

When we had long beheld everything in this land of Satin, Pantagruel said, I have sufficiently fed my eyes, but my belly is empty all this while, and chimes to let me know ’tis time to go to dinner. Let’s take care of the body lest the soul abdicate it; and to this effect let’s taste some of these anacampserotes [’An herb, the touching of which is said to reconcile lovers.’— Motteux.] that hang over our heads. Psha, cried one, they are mere trash, stark naught, o’ my word; they’re good for nothing.

I then went to pluck some mirobolans off of a piece of tapestry whereon they hung, but the devil a bit I could chew or swallow ‘em; and had you had them betwixt your teeth you would have sworn they had been thrown silk; there was no manner of savour in ‘em.

One might be apt to think Heliogabalus had taken a hint from thence, to feast those whom he had caused to fast a long time, promising them a sumptuous, plentiful, and imperial feast after it; for all the treat used to amount to no more than several sorts of meat in wax, marble, earthenware, painted and figured tablecloths.

While we were looking up and down to find some more substantial food, we heard a loud various noise, like that of paper-mills (or women bucking of linen); so with all speed we went to the place whence the noise came, where we found a diminutive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow, called Hearsa............