since it would not burn." He remained but six months in Rome, being recalled, as he states, by the king, perhaps as the bearer of some important communication from the ambassador. But during his short stay

Arabic from a bishop, progress in collecting

he had managed to learn the and to make considerable materials for a work on the topography and monuments of ancient Rome. On his return, it is related that he was brought to a stop at an inn at Lyons, for want of money to pay his bill and proceed, a sort of embarrassment which has become proverbial as the quarter of an hour of Rabelais. Wishing to remain unknown, in the interest of his errand, he disguised himself, and caused it to be declared to the chief doctors of the town that an eminent physician, having returned from long travels, desired to communicate his observations. Many came, to whom he discoursed long and learnedly. All at once, with a mysterious air, he secured the doors, and announced that he would reveal his great secret. "Here," said he, "is a most subtle poison that I have procured in Italy to deliver you from that tyrant the king and his family." He was seized, placed in a litter with a strong guard, and marched off to Paris-treated liberally on the way, at the public expense, as a prisoner of the highest importance. Led before Francis I., he threw off his disguise, resuming his natural voice and expression, and was immediately recognised by the king, who, thanking the Lyons notables for their zeal, graciously dismissed them, and kept Rabelais to supper, where he drank heartily to the health of the king and the prosperity of the loyal city of Lyons.

II

Rabelais soon returned to Lyons, which he called the seat of his studies. Here, in 1534, he issued an edition of Marliani's "Topography of Ancient Rome," abandoning his own projected work on the subject. It was his last publication of simple and serious scholarship; thenceforward he devoted his pen altogether to the sublime mysteries of Pantagruelism. He was appointed physician to the Grand Hôpital, and pursued his studies in astronomy and anatomy, on one occasion dissecting and lecturing upon the corpse of a criminal before a large number of persons. In 1535 he brought out another satirical "Almanack and Pantagruelian Prognostication," and, of far more importance, the third and definite redaction of "Gargantua," in which he retained nothing of the first except the names, some few events, and a score of comic phrases or ideas. It was now entitled, "The inestimable Life of the great Gargantua, father of Pantagruel, composed of yore by the Abstracter of Quintessence; book full of Pantagruelism." What Pantagruelism is he tells us in the New Prologue to Book iv. "C'est certaine gayeté d'esperit conficte en mépris des choses fortuites," which the English version renders: "a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune."

It has been thought that Rabelais founded a secret society of Pantagruelists, with the twofold object of spreading the Reformation among the common people, and Epicureanism among the higher classes; while an eminent French scholar thinks that he was

Lutheran in the first book, and Epicurean only in the fifth, published after his death. If he did found a secret society, it was probably only as a club for wit and revelry, not for propagandism of any kind. It must be remembered that he was now over fifty years of age, and had outlived all his illusions, and the belief in such a propaganda would be a very youthful illusion indeed. The abbey of Thélème, so magnificently described in the last "Gargantua " (Book i., as we have it now), and in which all the arrangements are in direct contradiction to those of ordinary convents, is supposed to represent this new philosophy as conceived by Rabelais, Etienne Dolet, Bonaventure des Periers, Clément Marot, Maurice Sève, Lyon Jamet, and the most eminent men of the time. It is certain that Rabelais was very intimate with Dolet and Marot; but they were soon separated. Placards blaspheming the sacrifice of the Mass were posted about Paris in the night, and an image of the Virgin at the corner of a street was profaned. Francis I. declared that he would cut off his own arm if he knew that it was gangrened with heresy, and ordered the Parliament to proceed with vigour and rigour against all of dubious faith. Six Lutherans were burnt alive, in presence of the king and all the court. Marot heard that his papers and books had been seized in his rooms at Paris, and forthwith fled to Bearn, to the protection of the sister of Francis, his Marguerite des Marguerites, or Pearl of Pearls, the noble Marguerite of Navarre, patroness and protectress of all liberal thinkers and writers. Not feeling safe even with her, he went to Ferrara, and then to Venice; and, indeed, she did not pass un

attacked herself, for Brantôme says, "The Constable de Montmorency, when in the greatest favour, speaking one day with the king, did not scruple to tell him that if he really meant to exterminate the heretics from his realm, he must begin with his court and those nearest him, naming the queen his sister." Dolet was imprisoned at Lyons until released by the influence of his protector, Pierre Duchâtel, Bishop of Tulle. Rabelais, who had satirised the monks and Catholicism in the last "Gargantua," hurried off to Italy in 1536. In Mr. Besant's words: "He chose the safest place in Europe for a man of heretical opinions-Rome." Jean du Bellay was still there on business of the king, and in high favour with the new Pope, Paul III., who had made him a cardinal; and Rabelais was again attached to his household, as physician, reader, secretary, and librarian. Rabelais, by the advice of his friends, addressed to the Pope a supplication for apostasy, in which, after confessing his sins against the Church, and particularly his flight from the convent of Maillezais, he besought full absolution for the past, with permission to resume the Benedictine habit and re-enter the monastery, and also to practise medicine wherever he pleased, but for charity, not payment, and using neither fire nor iron. By the intervention of some Roman cardinals, who loved his wit and learning more than they hated his heresies, he got all he asked for, and thus protected by the bulls of the Pope, could defy even the Sorbonne. However, he did not at once return to France, where the persecution was still hot, but remained at Rome till March 1537, when he was recalled to both Paris and Montpellier-to Paris to

occupy a benefice which Cardinal du Bellay had assigned him in the Abbey de St. Maur des Fossés, to Montpellier to take his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Sixteen letters, written by him during this sojourn to the Bishop of Maillezais, are extant, and appear in the English edition of his works (Bohn's; the translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Motteux), having been first published a hundred years after his death. He went direct to Montpellier, where he took his degree in May, being fifty-four years old, and gave public lectures on anatomy, &c., for about a year, although he was not a professor. L. Jacob, Bibliophile (Paul Lacroix), to whose very full Memoir, prefixed to his edition of Rabelais, I am much indebted, says, on the authority of Kuhnholtz: "The faculty, nevertheless, placed his portrait among those of the professors, and this original portrait, which was painted about this time, represents Rabelais with a bearing noble and majestic, regular features, fresh and ruddy complexion, fine beard of a pale gold, intelligent (spirituelle) expression, eyes full of both fire and sweetness, air gracious though grave and thoughtful."

Rabelais seems to have then gone to Paris, where he practised medicine, but did not fulfil the other conditions of the Papal brief which gave him security, not renouncing the secular habit nor submitting to conventual discipline. The Cardinal du Bellay had returned to France, and obtained a well-deserved preponderance in the Royal Council, and he enjoined Rabelais to enter upon the functions of the canonry, in the convent of St. Maur des Fossés, to which he had been appointed. The other canons opposed his