Pantagruel and Gargantua
(by Francois Rabelais a.k.a. Alcofribas Nasier - excerpts 1532, 1534)
THE SECOND BOOK. Chapter2.XXXIV. The conclusion of this present book, and the excuse of the author."...how he visited the regions of the moon to know whether indeed the moon were not entire and whole..."
----------
THE THIRD BOOK. Chapter 3.LI. Why it is called Pantagruelion, and of the admirable virtues thereof.
"Who knows but by his sons may be found out an herb of such another virtue and prodigious energy, as that by the aid thereof, in using it aright according to their father's skill, they may contrive a way for humankind to pierce into the high aerian clouds, get up unto the springhead of the hail, take an inspection of the snowy sources, and shut and open as they please the sluices from whence proceed the floodgates of the rain; then, prosecuting their aethereal voyage, they may step in unto the lightning workhouse and shop, where all the thunderbolts are forged, where, seizing on the magazine of heaven and storehouse of our warlike fire-munition, they may discharge a bouncing peal or two of thundering ordnanee for joy of their arrival to these new supernal places, and, charging those tonitrual guns afresh, turn the whole force of that artillery against ourselves wherein we most confided. Then is it like they will set forward to invade the territories of the Moon..."
----------
THE FOURTH BOOK: Chapter 4.XVII. How Pantagruel came to the islands of Tohu and Bohu; and of the strange death of Wide-nostrils, the swallower of windmills.
"Plutarch also, in his book of the face that appears on the body of the moon, speaks of one Phenaces, who very much feared the moon should fall on the earth, and pitied those that live under that planet."
