Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/20

 4 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES terrible sentence passed on Rabelais, in addition to whatever may have been betrayed by Amy ; but they are all legendary rather than historical, and seem to have been suggested by the drolleries of his great work, not begun till long afterwards, rather than by anything known of him during these years of solitary and strenuous study. Thus, he is said to have mingled with the wine of the monks certain anti- aphrodisiacs, or, on the contrary, certain aphrodisiacs ; to have got drunk at a village festival and preached debauchery to the peasants, giving them a fearful example by songs and dances and lewd antics ; to have posed himself in the place of the statue of St. Francis in the porch of the church of the convent, and by suddenly laughing and gesticulating, made the poor people kneeling before him cry out, " A miracle ! " — " On ajoute qtiil poussa V irreverence et le sacrilege Jusqu' d. les asperger d'une eaii qtd n^etait rien inoins que bhiite," He was rescued from this living burial by some of his powerful friends, particularly Andre Tiraqueau, who by his office had a certain authority over the convent, and who had to force the gates in order to release him. By the mediation of the same staunch friends he obtained, in 1524, an indulgence from Clement VII., permitting him to pass into the order of St. Benedict, to enter the Abbey of Maillezais under his friend Geoffroi d'Estissac, to assume the habit of a regular canon, and, notwithstanding his previous vow of poverty, to hold any Church livings he might obtain as a Benedictine. He was now forty years of age, and the best years of his life, all his young manhood, had been immured amongst the