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. 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,—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 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 ninepins—were to join him in a Great Feast of 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.

He must have been a wonderful baby; because just as soon as he was born, instead of crying "Mie! mie! mie!" as any other baby would have done, he shouted out at the top of his lungs, "Drink! drink! drink!" There never were such lungs as his, everybody said. The old Doctor himself, and the Three Wise Old Women who were there, all declared that he had the biggest throat ever known,—not even excepting his father's. Now it happened that, of all the days of the year, the very day the Royal Herald had proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets, for the famous Feast of Tripes, was the very day on which the baby Prince was born. When the great news was carried to King Grandgousier, who was drinking and making merry with his friends, that he had a son, and that the young Prince was already bawling for his drink, his joy almost choked him, and he could only find breath to say in French:—

"Que grand tu as!"—meaning "What a big throat thou hast!"

Everybody, including Queen Gargamelle, when she heard of it, the family Doctor, and the Three Old Wise Women, laughed at this joke of the King, and declared that it was the very best name that could be given to the royal babe. From that moment, they began, when talking to him or speaking of him, to call him little Prince Que-grand-tu-as! Although they ran these four words trippingly together, and nobody not in the secret would have thought it more than a very strange name, yet, somehow, it was too long; and so, little by little, they kept changing till the very oldest of the Three Old Wise Women, who had been, one hot day, half-dozing over the cradle, started up suddenly, crying:—

"I have it!"

"Well, what have you?" called the second oldest, who was wide awake, sharply.

"The name for our dear little Prince!"

"Don't be too sure of that, gossip. But why don't you say what it is?" she snapped in an awful curiosity, and just the least bit jealous.

"Gargantua!"

"Oh, my!" said the third oldest, who was a mild sort of old lady.

Some say that it was the lords and neighbors who were feasting on the tripes, when the old King cried out, Que grand tu as! who had shouted back that the young Prince ought to be called "Gargantua." I am rather afraid that the oldest of the Three Wise Old Women had been listening at the door of the royal banqueting hall, when she ought to have been in Queen Gargamelle's chamber.