Château de Legugé of his patron and friend d'Estissac, where he had his little chamber for study, Rabelais found it advisable to make a move. The clergy had prevailed on the Parliament of Paris to order rigorous measures against those holding, or suspected of holding, the new doctrines. Clément Marot, accused specifically of eating lard in Lent, and generally of want of faith, was imprisoned in the châtelet, which in one of his poems he describes as a hell, and a very foul one. Bonaventure des Periers was denounced as an atheist by an Abbé Sagon, for words spoken, in chat with other gentlemen, of Marguerite of Navarre, and narrowly escaped. Louis de Berquin, accused by the Sorbonne headed by Beda, in spite of the favour of the king and the vigorous defence of Buda, was condemned as a relapsed heretic, and first strangled in consideration of his noble birth, and then burnt along with his books in the Place de Grève, in 1529. Rabelais went off to Montpellier to pursue his studies in medicine, which he had already by himself carried much further than most doctors of the age, Montpellier being then the most famous medical school in Europe. Thus, a contemporary of Rabelais, Andrew Boorde, writes: "At last I dyd stay at Muntpilior, which is the noblest universite of the world for phisicions and surgeons." (English Text Society; Extra Series, x.) He inscribed himself on the register, 16th September 1530, being then forty-seven years old, and, on account of the vast knowledge he brought with him, was received bachelor on the the 1st November following. He lectured to large audiences on Hippocrates and Galen, correcting the Latin version in use by colla

tion with a Greek MS. of his own. He had his amusements with his fellow-bachelors. In "Pantagruel" (iii., xxxiv.), Panurge says to Carpalim: "I have not seen you since you played at Montpellier, with our old friends, Anthony Saporta, Guy Bourgnier, Balthazar Noyer, Tolet, John Quentin, Francis Robinet, John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the moral comedy of him who married a dumb wife." And Epistemon having sketched the plot, which was worked up by Molière in his Médecin Malgré Lui, adds: “I never laughed so much in my life as at that buffoonery" (patelinage, from the celebrated farce of Patelin, to which Rabelais frequently alludes). Some of those who acted with him became among the most eminent doctors of the university. Though but a bachelor, he was selected to plead with Chancellor Duprat for the privileges of Montpellier, which had been restricted. Arriving at Paris, he could not obtain an audience of the great man. Clothing himself in a long green gown and an Armenian bonnet, with spectacles attached to it, and with a huge inkstand at his girdle, he marched solemnly up and down in front of the Chancellor's residence. A crowd soon gathered, and the attention of Duprat was called to the outlandish masquerader. One of the household was sent to ask him who he was, and he answered, "I am the flayer of calves." A page was sent out to ask him what brought him to Paris; he replied in Latin. One of the gentlemen who knew Latin being brought, Rabelais answered him in Greek; and so with one after another, in Spanish, Italian, German, English, Hebrew, &c., just as he has made Panurge do in "Pantagruel,” ii. 9. At length the Chancellor

ordered that he should be brought in, when he spoke so eloquently and wisely on the subject of his mission. that all he asked for Montpellier was granted. His memory has been conserved there by a custom said to be still observed. They kept his collegiate dress, a gown of red cloth, with large sleeves and black velvet collar, bearing his initials embroidered in gold; and the bachelors put on this robe to pass their fifth examination, and when they took it off each retained a small piece as a relic. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it had become so short that it only reached to the waist, and a fresh one was substituted in 1610, which was again renewed in 1720.

Early in 1532 he quitted Montpellier without taking his doctor's degree, although he was thoroughly qualified, and afterward practised, and went to Lyons, where he assisted Etienne Dolet in bringing out various classical works. Here he published the second volume of the medical letters of Manardi, as well as a revised and corrected edition of the Latin version of various treatises of Hippocrates and Galen, and two forged Latin documents, by which he was deceived. Tradition says that he was incited to begin his burlesque "Gargantua" by the complaints of his bookseller that the medical books would not sell; but this is very doubtful, as it is recorded that they were several times re-published. At any rate, the first edition, or, rather, version of the "Gargantua" (for the second had important and, indeed, radical variations) appeared in 1532, under the imposing title of "The great and inestimable Chronicles of the great and enormous giant Gargantua, containing the genealogy, the greatness and strength of his body; also

the marvellous deeds of arms he wrought for King Arthur, as you will see in the sequel; newly printed." Three hundred years elapsed before this book was definitively recognised for the first draft of the "Gargantua," as it appears in his works. The author called himself Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of François Rabelais, Abstracter of Quintessence; a pseudonym still preserved in the heading of the first and second books. Like "Don Quixote," his great work was begun simply as an extravagant burlesque of the romances of chivalry, very popular under Francis I., and, as with the masterpiece of Cervantes, the scope and intention of the book continually widened as it proceeded. This first part became at once immensely popular; as he tells us himself in the prologue to Book ii., more copies had been sold in a couple of months than would be bought of the Bible in nine years. As to the manner in which it was written, he says: "In the composition of this lordly book I never wasted or employed any more or any other time than that allotted to my bodily refection, that is, to my drinking and eating." Early in 1533 appeared the first edition (also unknown to bibliographers until 1834) of what is now the second book, under the title of "Pantagruel: the horrible and terrific deeds and prowesses of the most renowned Pantagruel, King of Dipsodes, son of the great giant Gargantua. Newly composed by Master Alcofribas Nasier." At least three editions of this were published at Lyons in the same year, to one of which he added the "Pantagrueline prognostication, certain, veritable, and infallible, for the year 1533," burlesqueing the judicial astrology which had then multitudes of

believers. This he followed up by an Almanac for the same year, written with the same intent, and to which he put his own name, calling himself doctor of medicine and professor of astrology. He composed other Prognostications and Almanacs for subsequent years, of which but a few fragments are known.

In January 1534, Jean du Bellay, then Bishop of Paris, passed through Lyons on his way to Rome, having been called from England, where he was ambassador, in order to attempt a reconciliation between Henry VIII. and the Pope. He offered to take Rabelais as his physician, and the offer was joyfully accepted, Rabelais having long desired to see Italy and Rome, and being specially glad to go there in the suite of his old friend and college-mate, one of the most able and liberal-minded prelates of the period. Many doubtful stories are told of Rabelais' sayings and doings at Rome, and, indeed, no man has had more drolleries fathered on him. One of the many is, probably, grounded on fact. Clement VII. having promised to grant him any petition, he begged to be excommunicated, thus explaining the motive of his strange request: "Holy Father, I am French, and of a small town named Chinon, considered very subject to the faggot; they have already burnt there many worthy people, relatives of mine. Now, if your Holiness will excommunicate me, I shall never burn, and for this reason: In coming to Rome we stopped, on account of the cold, in a wretched hut; an old woman who tried to kindle a faggot for us and could not succeed, said it must have been excommunicated by the Pope's own mouth,