of St. Bernard's was to be believed--of a certain bishop who went as
early as the second century to consult the doctors of Montpellier; and it
would have been in vain to reply to them that in those days, and long
after them, Montpellier was not yet built. The facts are said to be:
that as early as the beginning of the thirteenth century Montpellier had
its schools of law, medicine, and arts, which were erected into a
university by Pope Nicholas IV. in 1289.

The university of Montpellier, like--I believe--most foreign ones,
resembled more a Scotch than an English university. The students lived,
for the most part, not in colleges, but in private lodgings, and
constituted a republic of their own, ruled by an abbe of the scholars,
one of themselves, chosen by universal suffrage. A terror they were
often to the respectable burghers, for they had all the right to carry
arms; and a plague likewise, for, if they ran in debt, their creditors
were forbidden to seize their books, which, with their swords, were
generally all the property they possessed. If, moreover, any one set up
a noisy or unpleasant trade near their lodgings, the scholars could
compel the town authorities to turn him out. They were most of them,
probably, mere boys of from twelve to twenty, living poorly, working
hard, and--those at least of them who were in the colleges--cruelly
beaten daily, after the fashion of those times; but they seem to have
comforted themselves under their troubles by a good deal of wild life out
of school, by rambling into the country on the festivals of the saints,
and now and then by acting plays; notably, that famous one which Rabelais
wrote for them in 1531: "The moral comedy of the man who had a dumb
wife;" which "joyous patelinage" remains unto this day in the shape of a
well-known comic song. That comedy young Rondelet must have seen acted.
The son of a druggist, spicer, and grocer--the three trades were then
combined--in Montpellier, and born in 1507, he had been destined for the
cloister, being a sickly lad. His uncle, one of the canons of
Maguelonne, near by, had even given him the revenues of a small chapel--a
job of nepotism which was common enough in those days. But his heart was
in science and medicine. He set off, still a mere boy, to Paris to study
there; and returned to Montpellier, at the age of eighteen, to study
again.

The next year, 1530, while still a scholar himself, he was appointed
procurator of th