their bodies as well as souls.

There are idle tales to the effect that he made his will as follows: "I
have nothing--I owe much--I leave the rest to the poor." And also that
he sent a message as follows, to Cardinal du Ballay. "Tell the cardinal
I am going to try the great 'perhaps'--you are a fool--draw the
curtain--the farce is done." These were fictions invented by the very
pious Catholics, who hated him for his satires upon the church.

Rabelais must have been a great man. Even his learning alone would have
made him the most distinguished man in France at the time he lived.
Those who hated him have tried to cover his memory with shame, and have
represented him as merely a buffoon, but such was not the truth. He did
often descend to buffooneries and to almost obscene sayings, and these
things have had their influence upon France, and have contributed to
make the French people what they are to-day--a nation of professed
Catholics, but really a nation of infidels and atheists. But Rabelais
was more than a wit. He was a public benefactor. He improved medical
science, and was as much a reformer in his laughable attacks upon the
fat and lazy monks, as was Calvin himself.

Rabelais died at the age of seventy, and was buried in the churchyard of
St. Paul, Rue des Jardins, at the foot of a beautiful tree which was
preserved in his memory. No monument was ever placed over his grave, but
he did not need one to perpetuate his memory.

THE DRAMATIST.

One of the men of the past who exerted and still exerts a wide influence
over French literature, is Racine. He was born in 1639, in the small
town Ferte-Milon, in Valois. The parents died while he was in infancy,
and he and a sister, their only children, were left orphans in the care
of their maternal grandfather. This sister remained in Ferte-Milon
during her life, which was not long. Racine was not happy while young,
and being neglected by his grandparents felt it keenly. He was a scholar
at Beauvais, and attached himself to one of the political parties which
at that time always sprang up in schools and colleges. He was in one of
their contests wounded upon his forehead, and bore the scar through
life.

Racine was transferred from Beauvais to the school of the convent of
Port Royal, and the Jesuits noticing his natural quickness, bestowed
careful attention upon his education. He was so wretchedly poor that he
could not buy copies of the classics, and he was oblige