Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/45

RABELAIS 29 dinal de Chastillon really thanking him for having, in conjunction with other friends, procured the royal permission for the republication of the work. At any rate, the king did intervene ; and the Faculty of Theology and the Parliament left Rabelais and his book to their own wicked devices, unchecked. He was only made to resign one of the two livings he held; and in January 1553, he resigned that of St. Christophe de Jambet, being the farther from Paris. It is doubtful whether he had ever visited it. The vogue of this fourth book was such that the Paris printer almost immediately issued a new edition, revised and corrected by the author; and piratical editions abounded throughout France. Our worthy cure of Meudon lived in his parish in peace, troubled only by a quarrel with Ronsard, who had taken up the cause of his friend and master, Pierre Ramus, the anti-Aristotelian, with whom Rabe- lais had a literary feud. Ronsard vented his rancour in a long epitaph on his old friend. Rabelais was a frequent guest of his " good parishioners " the Duke and Duchess of Guise, and was visited by the most distinguished scholars and nobles of Paris. He had grown so virtuously discreet, now that he was verging on the threescore and ten, that he would allow no woman to enter his manse ! He assiduously fulfilled the duties of his office — improving his church, in- structing his choristers, and teaching the poor to read. People flocked from all the surrounding country to see him in the character of a decorous cure, and hear him preach. Meudon thus became a regular resort of the Parisians, who continued to go there long after his death, in accordance with the proverbial saying,