"The means, Mac? Is not that rather my question than yours? We judge ourselves from within; 'others judge us by what we have done,' says Goethe. The means, ha, and the motive? Why will men seek stumblingly after these, when actually their sole concern is with the thing done? So, you two look at me,--I was but pondering,--putting a case;--so far, the means here have been simple and innocent,--my hand, my eye, my brain, my purpose; but--Mac!" added he, suddenly, after a pause, "did you never, in reading Rabelais, feel that somehow there was a profound and reverential symbolism underlying the wild froth of words in which the histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel have come down to us? that in all that _olla-podrida_ of filth, quip, jest, wicked folly, and mad wisdom, was yet hidden, like the pearl in the oyster, a deep and most mystic system of world-philosophy?"
"Anan?" said Mac, looking at the boy curiously.
"For instance, in what the good Curé of Meudon says about the 'herb Pantagruelion',--did the symbolism and esoteric meaning of all that never strike you?"
"Oh, yes," cried Mac, with a singularly significant smile, "I see how it is now. I understand. You are improving, Clarian, rapidly. Hum, wonder what your mother would say, if she knew you were a friend of Panurge's, and did draw such inferences from his wisdom! Yes, _mon enfant_, I have long felt the profundity of Pantagruelion, not less than the oracular efficacy of Bacbuc. And no one can deny that the thinnest strand of Manila, if not full of mysteries _per se_, can at least open the way for us to the very innermost crypts, and hence may be styled _potentially_ a very gateway to Eleusinia."