“What joy among these dispensing officers of the body when, after their complex work and hard labor, they see this stream of red gold. Each limb separates and opens to assimilate or purify anew this treasure, the blood. The heart, with its musical diastole and systole, subtilizes it so that, met at the ventricle, it is perfection; then, by the veins, it returns from all the limbs. The harmony of Heaven is no greater than that of the body of man. One is overwhelmed and lost when endeavoring to penetrate the depths of this wonderful microcosm. Believe me, there is therein something divine; ah! this little world is so good that, this alimentation achieved, it thinks already for those who are not yet born.”
This extract from Rabelais serves to repel the accusation of scepticism so often made against him, and we see two men in the personality of the celebrated writer of the sixteenth century: the savant who enriched belle lettres, and the popular philosopher who addressed himself to the disinherited of fortune and science. It was for the latter that he claimed from secular power the right to the material satisfactions of life, aside from the opinion of Pope and Church. Rabelais was the very incarnation of philanthrophy and in this above all other things he has honored the medical profession, of which he is an immortal member.
Rabelais it was who wished to be Architriclinus for the poor, for the indigent, the joyous heart of the Pantagruelist. It was to the latter that he remarked: “Drink merry friends, eternally, drink like hungry fishes. I shall, be your cup-bearer and host; I shall attend to your thirst, and never fear that the wine will fall short as at the wedding in Cana. As much as you draw from the tap, as much more will I astonish you at the bung; so that the wine cask shall never be empty; source of all life’s enjoyment, perpetual spring of happiness.”
The recollection of his youth, so calm and joyous in his father’s saloon, “the Lamprey Tavern,” amid the brave drinkers and gay wits, with full goblets of the rich Septembral vintage, pure, sparkling, rosy, grape juice, the glorious wine of his native Province, had much influence on the ideas and opinions of the philosopher. He heard again, as in the echos of memory, the merry songs of the grape gatherers, and the Bacchic chants died away in musical notes adown the aisles of the Temple of Time. He was happy in knowing himself to be Francois Rabelais, doctor in medicine, but looking backwards, he felt the vague and indefinable sentiment of poetry, that is ever associated with great genius. It was then he cried:
“O bouteille!
Pleine tout
Des mysteres,
D’un oreille
Je t’ecoute.”
Yet his heart was never sad, nor even tinged with melancholy. He dreamed of the golden age of a universal fraternity among mankind and eternal joy, the duration of the soul’s exile on earth.