scholar Bude came to his rescue, and passing
first, by favour of the Pope, to the Benedictine abbey of Maillezais,
before long he quitted the cloister, and, as a secular priest, began
his wanderings of a scholar in search of universal knowledge. In
1530-31 he was at Montpellier, studying medicine and lecturing on
medical works of Hippocrates and Galen; next year, at Lyons, one of
the learned group gathered around the great printers of that city,
he practised his art of physic in the public hospital, and was known
as a scientific author. Towards the close of 1532 he re-edited the
popular romance _Chroniques Gargantuines_, which tells the
adventures of the "enormous giant Gargantua." It was eagerly read,
and brought laughter to the lips of Master Rabelais' patients.
Learning, he held, was good, but few things in this world are
wholesomer than laughter. The success of the _Chroniques_ seems to
have moved him to write a continuation, and in 1533 appeared
_Pantagruel_, the story of the deeds and prowess of Gargantua's giant
son, newly composed by Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram which concealed
the name of Francois Rabelais. It forms the second of the five books
which make up its author's famous work. A recast or rather a new
creation of the Chronicles of Gargantua, replacing the original
_Chroniques_, followed in 1535. It was not until 1546 and 1552 that
the second and--in its complete form--the third books of _Pantagruel_
appeared, and the authorship was acknowledged. The last book was
posthumous (1562 in part, 1564 in full), and the inferiority of style,
together with the more bitter spirit of its satire, have led many
critics to the opinion that it is only in part from the hand of the
great and wise humourist.

Rabelais was in Rome in 1534, and again in 1535, as physician to the
French ambassador, Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris. He pursued his
scientific studies in medicine and botany, took lessons in Arabic,
and had all a savant's intelligent curiosity for the remains of
antiquity. Some years of his life were passed in wandering from one
French university to another. Fearing the hostility of the Sorbonne,
during the last illness of his protector Francis I., he fled to the
imperial city of Metz. He was once again in Rome with Cardinal du
Bellay, in 1549. Next year the author of _Pantagruel_ was appointed
cure of Meudon, near Paris, but, perhaps as a concession to public
opinion, he resigned his clerical charges on the eve