Chapter Thirteen: How Grandgousier Became Aware of Gargantua's Wonderful Capacities, When His Son Invented an Ass Wiper

At the end of his fifth year, Gargantua was visited by his father, Grandgousier, who had just returned from defeating the Canarrians. Grandgousier was as happy as such a father could possibly be, seeing such a son, and, kissing and hugging him, asked about a number of suitable childish matters. And Grandgousier drank a good bit, both with the boy and with his governesses, asking the latter most earnestly, among other things, if they had kept him fresh and clean. To which Gargantua replied that he had made sure that, nowhere in all the land, was there a boy cleaner than he was.

"And how do you manage that?" said Grandgousier.

"By long and careful experience," said Gargantua, "I have invented a method for wiping my ass which is the most noble, the best, and also the simplest ever seen."

"What is it?" asked Grandgousier.

"I'll tell you," said Gargantua, "right now."

"Once I wiped myself with a lady's velvet veil, and I liked that very much, because it was so soft that it made my ass feel really good;
--and then with a lady's hood, made of the same stuff, and it was just as good;
--and then with a man's scarf;
--and then with an embroidered red satin veil, but the gilt came off and rolled up into all sorts of shitty balls, and they scraped half the skin off my ass -- may Saint Anthony's fire roast the ass of the goldsmith who made the thing -- and the lady who wore it!
--I got over that by wiping myself with a page's hat, handsomely plumed in Swiss style.

"Then, once when I was shitting behind some bushes, I found a March cat and wiped myself with him, but his claws scratched my whole rear end.

"I cured msyelf of that, next day, by wiping myself with my mother's gloves -- nicely scented with cunt flavor.

"Then I wiped myself with sage, with fennel, with dill and anise, with sweet marjoram, with roses, pumpkins, with squash leaves, and cabbage, and beets, with vine leaves, and mallow, and Verbascum thapsus (that's mullein, and it's as red as my asshole), and lettuce and spinach leaves -- and a lot of good it all did me! -- and mercury weed, and purslane, and nettle leaves, and larkspur and comfrey. But then I got Lombardy dysentery, which I cured by wiping myself with my codpiece.

"Then I wiped myself with the bedclothes, the blankets, the bed curtains, with a cushion, a tablecloth (and then another, a green one), a dishcloth, a napkin, a handkerchief, and with a dressing gown. And I relished it all lik mangy dogs when you rub them down."

"To be sure," said Grandgousier, "but which ass wipe did you find the best?"

"I'm getting there," said Gargantua. "In just a minute you'll hear the tu autem, the real heart of it. I wiped myself with hay, with straw, with all sorts of fluffy junk, with tag wool, with real wool, with paper. But:

Wipe your dirty ass with paper
And you'll need to clean your ass with a scraper."

"What?" said Grandgousier. "My little fat-head, have you drunk the magic potion and started rhyming?"

"By God, yes, my king," Gargantua answered. "I rhyme so much that, sometimes, it makes me sick. Here's what our shit house says to the assholes who sit in it:

Plop
A whopper,
Blast it,
You pig shit
Asshole,
Drop her
A big shit
Past all
Blast holes --
Oh, dripping,
Slipping
Slop!
But Saint Anthony's fire come cracking
If you plop
And drop
Without stopping
To wipe your ass after cacking.

"Would you like to hear more?"

"Most certainly," said Grandgousier.

"Well then," said Gargantua, "here's a nice rondeau:

Shitting, the other day, I knew
Exactly how much I owed my ass;
The stink was so strong, so compelling, so nasty,
That my nose curled up and my ears turned blue.
Oh! If only someone would bring me
Her for whom I long, and I sing me,
While shitting!
I could have closed her water spout,
Although she'd try to keep me out,
Turning her fingers to a wall of glass,
And only shit could protect my ass
While shitting.

"Now try to tell me I don't know anything! By the smother of God, I didn't actually make that up, but I heard that noble lady -- the one over there -- recite it, and I plunked it right into my memory pouch."

"But now," said Grandgousier, "let's get back to the subject."

"Which is," said Gargantua, "shitting?"

"No," said Grandgousier. "It's ass-wiping."

"Well," said Gargantua, "will you give me a big barrel of Breton wine if I put you to shame on that subject?"

"Certainly," said Grandgousier.

"There's no need," said Gargantua, "to wipe your ass, if you haven't unloaded any shit. There can't be any shit if you haven't shat. So you've got to shit before you can wipe your ass."

"O my little rascal," said Grandgousier, "how clever you are! Pretty soon I'll have you made a doctor of poetic science -- by God I will! Because you're smarter than your years. Now stay with this matter of ass-wipery, please. And by my beard! instead of giving you a barrel, I'll give you sixty casks -- and not just any Breton wine, about which I know a thing or to: it doesn't grow in Brittany at all, but in Veron."

"Later on," said Gargantua, "I wiped myself with a headband, with a pillow, with a nice cloth slipper, with a game bag, with a basket -- but that was an awful way to wipe your ass! -- and then with a hat. Let me emphasize that there are hats and hats: some are smooth and plain, some are furred, some have velvet, some have taffeta, and there are others with satin. Best of all are the furry ones, because they do the best job of cleaning off shit.

"Then I wiped myself with a hen, a rooster, a baby chick, with a calf's skin, with a hare, a pigeon, a hawk, a lawyer's leather briefcase, a big hooded cape, a cap, and a falconer's wristband.

"But, to make a long story shorter, it's my solemn opinion that there is no ass wiper like a fluffy goose, if you keep its head between your legs. On my honor, this is the truth. Because you feel a miraculous voluptousness in your asshole, as much from the soft smoothness of that goose down as from the good warm bird, and this is readily communicated right into your asshole and up to the upper intestines, all the way through to the heart and the brain. Don't think that the bliss of all the heroes and demigods, out there on the Elysian Fields, comes just from their asphodel or their ambrosia or their nectar, as the old hags around here say it does. As I see it, their heavenly bliss comes from the fact that they wiped their asses with a soft goose -- and that's the opinion of master John Duns Scotus, too."

Again, this is the work of Mr. Francois Rabelais, writing in the mid-sixteenth century.

Interesting. Gargantua thinks that wiping your butt with paper is a bad thing. What about you? I bet there's a fair number of people reading this right now, who have never wiped their butts with anything other than toilet paper. You gotta try it sometime. It's weird.