Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/46

30 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Still popular in the seventeenth century, " Let us go to Meudon ] there we shall see the castle, the terrace, the grottos, and Af. le cure, the man in all the world of the most agreeable countenance, the most pleasant humour, the best to welcome his friends and all honest folk, and the best of talkers." The date and place of decease and the place of burial are uncer- tain. It is rather tradition than history that he died at Paris, April 9, 1553, in a house in the Rue des Jardins, and was interred in the cemetery of the parish of St. Paul, at the foot of a large tree, which stood for more than a century. The accounts of his last moments are most contradictory : his friends reported that his end was what is called edifying; his foes that he proved by his conduct and mockeries in the face of death that he had no belief in another life. For my own part, I confess that I do not think Rabelais a likely subject for repentance. He who had always mocked life might well mock death. The chief stories concerning his end are well known. The first is given among the "Apophthegms" of Lord Bacon, who terms Rabelais the grand jester of France. When he had received Extreme Unction he declared that they had greased his boots for the long journey. When the attending priest asked him whether he believed in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the wafer given him for the Communion, he answered, with a respectful air : " I believe in it, and it rejoices me J for I seem to see my God as when He entered Jerusalem, triumphant and borne by an ass." When he was near the point of death they passed over him his Benedictine robe, and he still had the spirit to pun in allusion to it : " Beati qui moriuntur in