Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/36

 20 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES eyed, Saint Ayl, Villeneufue la Guyart, Master Gabriel, physician of Savillan, Rabelais, Cohnau, Massuan, Maiorici, Bullon, Ceren, called Bourgemaistre, Fran- goys Proust, Ferron, Charles Girard, Frangoys Bourrd, and many more friends, followers, and servants of the deceased, all dismayed, regarded each other in silence, without saying a word, but all indeed reflecting and foreseeing in their minds that soon France would be deprived of a chevalier so perfect and necessary to her glory and protection, and that the heavens claimed him as due to them by natural propriety.' " Mark the long array of honourable witnesses, all well known, and all named for legacies in the will of Du Bellay, Rabe- lais himself having fifty livres a year till such time as he should hold livings worth at least three hundred livres per annum. And again, in Book iii., chap, xxi., the noble Pantagruel, speaking here also : " I will but remind you of the learned and valiant Chevalier Guillaume du Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the hill of Tarana, the loth of January, in the cli- macteric year of his age [the sixty-third], and of our computation 1543, according to the Roman reckon- ing. The three or four hours before his death he employed in vigorous speech, tranquil and serene in mind, predicting to us what in part we have since seen come to pass, and in part we expect to come ; although at the time these prophecies seemed to us somewhat incredible and strange, as we discerned no present cause or sign portending what he foretold." These serious testimonies of a writer who was anything but superstitious, and who burlesqued the astrologers with infinite scorn, are certainly trustworthy. He perhaps wrote the epitaph —