irst that he should die. He was worn out, it is said,
by over-exertion; by sorrow for the miseries of the land; by fruitless
struggles to keep the peace, and to strive for moderation in days when
men were all immoderate. But he rode away a day's journey--he took two
days over it, so weak he was--in the blazing July sun, to a friend's sick
wife at Realmont, and there took to his bed, and died a good man's death.
The details of his death and last illness were written and published by
his cousin Claude Formy; and well worth reading they are to any man who
wishes to know how to die. Rondelet would have no tidings of his illness
sent to Montpellier. He was happy, he said, in dying away from the tears
of his household, and "safe from insult." He dreaded, one may suppose,
lest priests and friars should force their way to his bedside, and try to
extort some recantation from the great savant, the honour and glory of
their city. So they sent for no priest to Realmont; but round his bed a
knot of Calvinist gentlemen and ministers read the Scriptures, and sang
David's psalms, and prayed; and Rondelet prayed with them through long
agonies, and so went home to God.

The Benedictine monk-historian of Languedoc, in all his voluminous
folios, never mentions, as far as I can find, Rondelet's existence. Why
should he? The man was only a druggist's son and a heretic, who healed
diseases, and collected plants, and wrote a book on fish. But the
learned men of Montpellier, and of all Europe, had a very different
opinion of him. His body was buried at Realmont; but before the schools
of Toulouse they set up a white marble slab, and an inscription thereon
setting forth his learning and his virtues; and epitaphs on him were
composed by the learned throughout Europe, not only in French and Latin,
but in Greek, Hebrew, and even Chaldee.

So lived and so died a noble man; more noble, to my mind, than many a
victorious warrior, or successful statesman, or canonised saint. To know
facts, and to heal diseases, were the two objects of his life. For them
he toiled, as few men have toiled; and he died in harness, at his
work--the best death any man can die.

VESALIUS THE ANATOMIST {9}

I cannot begin a sketch of the life of this great man better than by
trying to describe a scene so picturesque, so tragic in the eyes of those
who are wont to mourn over human follies, so comic in the eyes of those
who prefer to laugh over them, that