of Bouchard,
Bishop of Worms; those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; next the decretal
of Gratian, which succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne; then
the collection of Gregory IX.; then the Epistle of _Superspecula_, of
Honorius III. He rendered clear and familiar to himself that vast and
tumultuous period of civil law and canon law in conflict and at strife
with each other, in the chaos of the Middle Ages,--a period which Bishop
Theodore opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in 1227.

Decretals digested, he flung himself upon medicine, on the liberal arts.
He studied the science of herbs, the science of unguents; he became an
expert in fevers and in contusions, in sprains and abcesses. Jacques
d' Espars would have received him as a physician; Richard Hellain, as a
surgeon. He also passed through all the degrees of licentiate, master,
and doctor of arts. He studied the languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, a
triple sanctuary then very little frequented. His was a veritable fever
for acquiring and hoarding, in the matter of science. At the age of
eighteen, he had made his way through the four faculties; it seemed to
the young man that life had but one sole object: learning.

It was towards this epoch, that the excessive heat of the summer of 1466
caused that grand outburst of the plague which carried off more than
forty thousand souls in the vicomty of Paris, and among others, as Jean
de Troyes states, "Master Arnoul, astrologer to the king, who was a very
fine man, both wise and pleasant." The rumor spread in the University
that the Rue Tirechappe was especially devastated by the malady. It was
there that Claude's parents resided, in the midst of their fief. The
young scholar rushed in great alarm to the paternal mansion. When
he entered it, he found that both father and mother had died on the
preceding day. A very young brother of his, who was in swaddling
clothes, was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This was
all that remained to Claude of his family; the young man took the child
under his arm and went off in a pensive mood. Up to that moment, he had
lived only in science; he now began to live in life.

This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude's existence. Orphaned, the
eldest, head of the family at the age of nineteen, he felt himself
rudely recalled from the reveries of school to the realities of this
world. Then, moved with pity, he was seized with passion and devotion
towards that child, his brothe