One of the most prominent figures in the story of Pantagruel is his favourite, Panurge, who is a rogue, a drunkard, a coward, and a malicious scoundrel, but who yet, like Falstaff, in spite of all his moral deficiencies, manages to appear as an amusing personage. Into his lips is put, with a fine disregard of congruity, an eloquent speech, which begins in praise of debt, and ends by setting forth the interdependence of all things in the universe. Panurge is represented as having threescore and three ways of making money, and two hundred and fourteen of spending it, so that he is always poor, and his sovereign Pantagruel remonstrates with him on account of his prodigal habits.
He replies as follows: "Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always to pray for you; [to pray] that the giver of all good things may grant unto you a blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly with you, that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you, he will always speak good of you in every company, ever and anon purchase new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a shift by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul,[247] and with other folk's earth fill up his ditch. When of old in the region of the Gauls, by the institution of the Druids,[248] the servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the funerals and obsequies of their lords and masters, had not they fear enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, per force, they were to die with them for company. Did not they uncessantly send up their supplications to their great God Mercury,[249] as likewise unto Dis, the Father of Wealth,[250] to lengthen out their days, and preserve them long in health? Were not they very careful to entertain them well, punctually to look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly? For by those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death. Believe me your creditors with a more fervent devotion will beseech [Providence] to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than that you should die.... I, in this only respect and consideration of being a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable. For, against the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet, without having bottomed on so much as that which is called the First Matter [Primary Matter], did I out of nothing become such [a] maker and creator, that I have created--what?--a gay number of fair and jolly creditors. Nay, creditors, I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself exclusively,[251] are fair and goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature.... You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself environed and surrounded with brigades of creditors,--humble, fawning, and full of their reverences. And whilst I remark that, as I look more favourably upon, and give a chearfuller countenance to one than to the other, the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the first dispatched, and the foremost in the date of payment; and he valueth my smiles at the rate of ready money.... I have all my lifetime held debt to be as an union or conjunction of the heavens with the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept together;[252] yea, of such vertue and efficacy, that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam would very suddenly perish without it."