How Pantagruel excuseth Bridlegoose in the matter of sentencing actions at law by the chance of the dice.
With this Bridlegoose held his peace. Whereupon Trinquamelle bid him withdraw from the court--which accordingly was done--and then directed his discourse to Pantagruel after this manner: It is fitting, most illustrious prince, not only by reason of the deep obligations wherein this present parliament, together with the whole marquisate of Mirelingues, stand bound to your royal highness for the innumerable benefits which, as effects of mere grace, they have received from your incomparable bounty, but for that excellent wit also, prime judgment, and admirable learning wherewith Almighty God, the giver of all good things, hath most richly qualified and endowed you, we tender and present unto you the decision of this new, strange, and paradoxical case of Bridlegoose; who, in your presence, to your both hearing and seeing, hath plainly confessed his final judging and determinating of suits of law by the mere chance and fortune of the dice.
Therefore do we beseech you that you may be pleased to give sentence therein as unto you shall seem most just and equitable. To this Pantagruel answered: Gentlemen, it is not unknown to you how my condition is somewhat remote from the profession of deciding law controversies; yet, seeing you are pleased to do me the honour to put that task upon me, instead of undergoing the office of a judge I will become your humble supplicant. Iobserve, gentlemen, in this Bridlegoose several things which induce me to represent before you that it is my opinion he should be pardoned. In the first place, his old age; secondly, his simplicity; to both which qualities our statute and common laws, civil and municipal together, allow many excuses for any slips or escapes which, through the invincible imperfection of either, have been inconsiderately stumbled upon by a person so qualified. Thirdly, gentlemen, I must needs display before you another case, which in equity and justice maketh much for the advantage of Bridlegoose, to wit, that this one, sole, and single fault of his ought to be quite forgotten, abolished, and swallowed up by that immense and vast ocean of just dooms and sentences which heretofore he hath given and pronounced; his demeanours, for these forty years and upwards that he hath been a judge, having been so evenly balanced in the scales of uprightness, that envy itself till now could not have been so impudent as to accuse and twit him with any act worthy of a check or reprehension; as, if a drop of the sea were thrown into the Loire, none could perceive or say that by this single drop the whole river should be salt and brackish.
