Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/27

 RABELAIS II believers. This he followed up by an Almanac for the same year, written with the same intent, and to which he put his own name, calling himself doctor of medicine and professor of astrology. He com- posed other Prognostications and Almanacs for subsequent years, of which but a few fragments are known. In January 1534, Jean du Bellay, then Bishop of Paris, passed through Lyons on his way to Rome, having been called from England, where he was ambassador, in order to attempt a reconciliation be- tween Henry VHI. and the Pope. He offered to take Rabelais as his physician, and the offer was joy- fully accepted, Rabelais having long desired to see Italy and Rome, and being specially glad to go there in the suite of his old friend and college-mate, one of the most able and liberal-minded prelates of the period. Many doubtful stories are told of Rabelais' sayings and doings at Rome, and, indeed, no man has had more drolleries fathered on him. One of the many is, probably, grounded on fact. Cle- ment VII. having promised to grant him any petition, he begged to be excommunicated, thus explaining the motive of his strange request : " Holy Father, I am French, and of a small town named Chinon, con- sidered very subject to the faggot ; they have already burnt there many worthy people, relatives of mine. Now, if your Holiness will excommunicate me, I shall never burn, and for this reason : In coming to Rome we stopped, on account of the cold, in a wretched hut ; an old woman who tried to kindle a faggot for us and could not succeed, said it must have been excommunicated by the Pope's own mouth,