Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/37

 RABELAIS 21 " Ci git Langey, dont la plume et I'epee Ont surmonte Ciceron et Pompee." We know that he was on the most friendly terms with the noblemen and gentlemen he names, both before and after the death of their lord. The bequest to him seems to show either that a canonry at St. Maur was worth very little, or that he was not then drawing its income. It appears that Rend du Bellay gave him a living — that of St. Christophe de Jambert — whose duties he performed by deputy. Meanwhile the public was impatient for the long- promised continuation of " Pantagruel." It is pro- bable that his friends dissuaded him from bringing it out, in view of the terrible judgments given by the Parliament of Paris against heretical books and their authors. Clement Marot, whose return from exile had been procured by Marguerite of Navarre, had to take refuge in Geneva in 1543, the Sorbonne scenting heresy in his popular version of the Psalms, long used in the Calvinistic Churches. It was the translation to which Browning makes Ronsard allude — " And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist." Des Periers is said to have committed suicide about 1544, rather than fall into the hands of the Church. Etienne Dolet in 1546 was condemned, as a relapsed atheist, to be put to the torture, then hanged, then burned together with his books, with the thought- ful proviso that if he made any scandal, or uttered any blasphemy, at the place of execution, his tongue should be cut out and burned first. Yet in this very year Rabelais ventured to publish his third book, with