privilege of the king, dated 1550, protecting not only the books already published but also the sequel to "Pantagruel," yet to see the light. This privilege distinctly states that Rabelais had also published several works in Greek, Latin, French, and Tuscan ; but of these, other than those already mentioned, nothing is known. Thus secured against religious persecution, he was recalled to France, and was thenceforward in great measure attached to the powerful house of Lorraine, while faithful to his old protectors, the Du Bellays, who remained his steadfast friends. The Cardinal de Guise had just bought from the Duchess d'Etampes, who had been mistress of Francis I., the fine estate of Meudon, where, it being near Paris, he could reside with his brother, Henri de Lorraine, Duke de Guise, without remitting attendance at the court and council of the king. Cardinal du Bellay, as Bishop of Paris, had the vicarage (cure) of Meudon in his gift, and hastened to appoint to it Rabelais, thus gratifying the Lorraines as well as himself; the vicar (curé) in possession, of course, resigning at a hint from such great men, and being presumably indemnified with some other benefice. Accordingly, on the 19th January 1551, Rabelais was inducted vicar of the parish church of St. Martin de Meudon by the Bishop of Trèves, vicar-general of the Cardinal du Bellay; and, as Mr. Besant remarks, he has since been generally known as Curé of Meudon, though he was this but two years out of a life of seventy, he being sixtyeight when appointed. He now resolved or ventured to publish the fourth book of "Pantagruel," more daring in its satire and scepticism than any of the preceding. In his Dedicatory Epistle to his old protector, the Cardinal de Chastillon, dated Paris, 28th January 1552, he declares, with that coolness of consummate audacity which must have largely helped to save him when weaker men were lost: "But the calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, and laughterless fools (agelastes) had been so atrocious and unreasonable against me, that it had vanquished my patience, and I had intended not to write a jot more. For one of the least of their slanders was that all my books are stuffed with heresies, though they could not show a single one in any passage. Of joyous fooleries, free from offence to God and the king, yes they are the uniqué subject and theme of these books; of heresies, no; if not perversely, and against all usage of reason and common language, interpreted into what I would rather suffer a thousand deaths, were it possible, than have thought; as who should interpret bread, stone; fish, serpent; egg, scorpion." Yet, in this fourth book, he not only mercilessly derided the monks as before, but also the fasts of the Church, the Court of Rome, the Council of Trent, the authority of the Pope, and even (chap. xxvii.) the immortality of the soul, and (chap. xxviii.) the Divinity of Christ. Accordingly, this book had scarcely appeared when it was condemned by the Faculty of Theology, which procured a decree of the Parliament of Paris, dated 1st March 1552, suspending the sale, and summoning the printer to appear before it. Paul Lacroix, indeed, argues with probability that the first edition was suppressed, that which we have being the second, and the Epistle dedicatory to the Car dinal de Chastillon really thanking him for having, in conjunction with other friends, procured the royal permission for the republication of the work. At any rate, the king did intervene; and the Faculty of Theology and the Parliament left Rabelais and his book to their own wicked devices, unchecked. He was only made to resign one of the two livings he held; and in January 1553, he resigned that of St. Christophe de Jambet, being the farther from Paris. It is doubtful whether he had ever visited it. The vogue of this fourth book was such that the Paris printer almost immediately issued a new edition, revised and corrected by the author; and piratical editions abounded throughout France. Our worthy curé of Meudon lived in his parish in peace, troubled only by a quarrel with Ronsard, who had taken up the cause of his friend and master, Pierre Ramus, the anti-Aristotelian, with whom Rabelais had a literary feud. Ronsard vented his rancour in a long epitaph on his old friend. Rabelais was a frequent guest of his "good parishioners" the Duke and Duchess of Guise, and was visited by the most distinguished scholars and nobles of Paris. He had grown so virtuously discreet, now that he was verging on the threescore and ten, that he would allow no woman to enter his manse! He assiduously fulfilled the duties of his office-improving his church, instructing his choristers, and teaching the poor to read. People flocked from all the surrounding country to see him in the character of a decorous curé, and hear him preach. Meudon thus became a regular resort of the Parisians, who continued to go there long after his death, in accordance with the proverbial saying, still popular in the seventeenth century, "Let us go to Meudon; there we shall see the castle, the terrace, the grottos, and M. le curé, the man in all the world of the most agreeable countenance, the most pleasant humour, the best to welcome his friends and all honest folk, and the best of talkers." The date and place of decease and the place of burial are uncertain. It is rather tradition than history that he died at Paris, April 9, 1553, in a house in the Rue des Jardins, and was interred in the cemetery of the parish of St. Paul, at the foot of a large tree, which stood for more than a century. The accounts of his last moments are most contradictory: his friends reported that his end was what is called edifying; his foes that he proved by his conduct and mockeries in the face of death that he had no belief in another life. For my own part, I confess that I do not think Rabelais a likely subject for repentance. He who had always mocked life might well mock death. The chief stories concerning his end are well known. The first is given among the "Apophthegms" of Lord Bacon, who terms Rabelais the grand jester of France. When he had received Extreme Unction he declared that they had greased his boots for the long journey. When the attending priest asked him whether he believed in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the wafer given him for the Communion, he answered, with a respectful air: "I believe in it, and it rejoices me; for I seem to see my God as when He entered Jerusalem, triumphant and borne by an ass." When he was near the point of death they passed over him his Benedictine robe, and he still had the spirit to pun in allusion to it: "Beati qui moriuntur in Domino." ("Blessed are they who die in the Lord, or in a domino.") He is said to have dictated the magnificent and munificent will: "I have nothing, I owe much; the rest I give to the poor." Whatever doubt there may be as to the genuineness of the preceding, I think there can be little or none as to that of the two following; they are so eminently characteristic. A page was introduced, sent by his friend Cardinal du Bellay, or Cardinal de Chastillon, to inquire as to his state. He beckoned the youth to his bedside, and murmured faintly: "Tell monseigneur in what gallant humour you find me; I go to seek a great Perhaps." Finally, before expiring, he gathered all his strength to exclaim, with a laugh: "Draw the curtain: the farce is over." What adds to the presumption of the essential truth of these stories is the fact that the priest who confessed him and administered to him the sacrament spread the report that he died drunk, proving the priestly disgust at his end; while we may assume that the absolution and sacrament would have been withheld had the same priest at the time not considered him to be in a fit state to receive them. All the poets of the time made epitaphs on him in French or Latin verse, most of them celebrating less his marvellous genius than his inexhaustible jollity. Thus his friend Baïf, one of the Pleiad, writes: "Oh Pluto, receive Rabelais, that thou, who art the king of those who never laugh, mayst henceforth have a laugher!"— "O! Pluton, Rabelais reçoi, |