im and to his mother,
Louise of Savoy, a thank-offering so acceptable to God, that Louis
Berquin--who would not, in spite of the entreaties of Erasmus, purchase
his life by silence--was burnt at last on the Place de Greve, being first
strangled, because he was of gentle blood.

Montpellier received its famous guest joyfully. Rabelais was now forty-
two years old, and a distinguished savant; so they excused him his three
years' undergraduate's career, and invested him at once with the red gown
of the bachelors. That red gown--or, rather, the ragged phantom of it--is
still shown at Montpellier, and must be worn by each bachelor when he
takes his degree. Unfortunately, antiquarians assure us that the
precious garment has been renewed again and again--the students having
clipped bits of it away for relics, and clipped as earnestly from the new
gowns as their predecessors had done from the authentic original.

Doubtless, the coming of such a man among them to lecture on the
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Ars Parva of Galen, not from the Latin
translations then in use, but from original Greek texts, with comments
and corrections of his own, must have had a great influence on the minds
of the Montpellier students; and still more influence--and that not
altogether a good one--must Rabelais's lighter talk have had, as he
lounged--so the story goes--in his dressing-gown upon the public place,
picking up quaint stories from the cattle-drivers off the Cevennes, and
the villagers who came in to sell their olives and their grapes, their
vinegar and their vine-twig faggots, as they do unto this day. To him
may be owing much of the sound respect for natural science, and much,
too, of the contempt for the superstition around them, which is notable
in that group of great naturalists who were boys in Montpellier at that
day. Rabelais seems to have liked Rondelet, and no wonder: he was a
cheery, lovable, honest little fellow, very fond of jokes, a great
musician and player on the violin, and who, when he grew rich, liked
nothing so well as to bring into his house any buffoon or
strolling-player to make fun for him. Vivacious he was, hot-tempered,
forgiving, and with a power of learning and a power of work which were
prodigious, even in those hard-working days. Rabelais chaffs Rondelet,
under the name of Rondibilis; for, indeed, Rondelet grew up into a very
round, fat, little man; but Rabelais puts excellent sense into his mouth,