Such is the history of Gargantua, which was afterwards formed by Rabelais into the first book of his great comic romance. It was published anonymously, the author merely describing himself as “l’abstracteur de quinte essence;” but he afterwards adopted the pseudonyme of Alcofribas Nasier, which is merely an anagram of his own name, François Rabelais. A very improbable story has been handed down to us relating to this book. It is pretended that, having published a book of medical science which had no sale, and the publisher complaining that he had lost money by it, Rabelais promised to make amends for his loss, and immediately wrote the history of Gargantua, by which the same book-seller made his fortune. There can be no doubt that this remarkable satire had a deeper origin than any casual accident like this; but it was exactly suited to the taste and temper of the age. It was quite original in its form and style, and it met with immediate and great success. Numerous editions followed each other rapidly, and its author, encouraged by its popularity, very soon afterwards produced a second romance, in continuation, to which he gave the title of Pantagruel. The caricature in this second romance is bolder even than in the first, the humour broader, and the satire more pungent. Grandgousier has disappeared from the scene, and his son, Gargantua, is king, and has a son named Pantagruel, whose kingdom is that of the Dipsodes. The first part of this new romance is occupied chiefly with Pantagruel’s youth and education, and is a satire on the university and on the lawyers, in which the parodies on their style of pleading as then practised is admirable. In the latter part, Pantagruel, like his father Gargantua, is engaged in great wars. It was perhaps the continued success of this new production of his pen which led Rabelais to go on with it, and form the design of making these two books part only of a more extensive romance. During his studies in Paris, Pantagruel has made the acquaintance of a singular individual named Panurge, who becomes his attached friend and constant companion, holding somewhat the position of brother Jean in the first book, but far more crafty and versatile. The whole subject of the third book arises out of Pantagreul’s desire to marry, and its various amusing episodes describe the different expedients which, at the suggestion of Panurge, he adopts to arrive at a solution of the question whether his marriage would be fortunate or not.
In publishing his fourth book, Rabelais complains that his writings had raised him enemies, and that he was accused of having at least written heresy. In fact, he had bitterly provoked both the monks and the university and parliament; and, as the increasing reaction of Romanism in France gave more power of persecution to the two latter, he was not writing without some degree of danger, yet the satire of each successive book became bolder and more direct. The fifth, which was left unfinished at his death, and which was published posthumously, was the most severe of them all. The character of Gargantua, indeed, was almost forgotten in that of Pantagruel, and Pantagruelism became an accepted name for the sort of gay, reckless satire of which he was looked upon as the model. He described it himself as a certaine gaieté d’esprit confite en mépris des choses fortuites, in fact, neither Romanism nor Protestantism, but simply a jovial kind of Epicurianism. All the gay wits of the time aspired to be Pantagruelists, and the remainder of the sixteenth century abounded in wretched imitations of the style of Rabelais, which are now consigned as mere rarities to the shelves of the bibliophilist.
Among the dangers which began to threaten them in France in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, liberal opinions found an asylum at the court of a princess who was equally distinguished by her beauty, by her talents and noble sentiments, and by her accomplishments. Marguerite d’Angoulême, queen of Navarre, was the only sister of François I., who was her junior by two years, and was affectionately attached to her. She was born on the 11th of April, 1492. She had married, first, that unfortunate duke d’Alençon, whose misconduct at Pavia was the cause of the disastrous defeat of the French, and the captivity of their king. The duke died, it was said of grief at his misfortune, in 1525; and two years afterwards, on the 24th of January, 1527, she married Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre. Their daughter, Jeanne d’Albret, carried this petty royalty to the house of Bourbon, and was the mother of Henri IV.
Marguerite held her court in true princely manner in the castle of Pau or at Nérac, and she loved to surround herself with a circle of men remarkable for their character and talents, and ladies distinguished by beauty and accomplishments, which made it rival in brilliance even that of her brother François. She placed nearest to her person, under the character of her valets-de-chambre, the principal poets and beaux-esprits of her time, such as Clement Marot, Bonaventure des Periers, Claude Gruget, Antoine du Moulin, and Jean de la Haye, and admitted them to such a tender familiarity of intercourse, as to excite the jealousy of the king her husband, from whose ill-treatment she was only protected by her brother’s interference. The poets called her chamber a “veritable Parnassus.” Hers was certainly a great mind, greedy of knowledge, dissatisfied with what was, and eager for novelties, and therefore she encouraged all who sought for them. It was in this spirit, combined with her earnest love for letters, that she threw her protection over both the sceptics and the religious reformers. At the beginning of the persecutions, as early as 1523, she openly declared herself the advocate of the Protestants. When Clement Marot was arrested by order of the Sorbonne and the Inquisitor on the charge of having eaten bacon in Lent, Marguerite caused him to be liberated from prison, in defiance of his persecutors. Some of the purest and ablest of the early French reformers, such as Roussel and Le Fèvre d’Etaples, and Calvin himself, found a safe asylum from danger in her dominions. As might be supposed, the bigoted party were bitterly incensed against the queen of Navarre, and were not backward in taking advantage of an opportunity for showing it. A moral treatise, entitled “Le Miroir de l’Ame Pécheresse,” of which Marguerite was the author, was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1533, but the king compelled the university, in the person of its rector, Nicolas Cop, to disavow publicly the censure. This was followed by a still greater act of insolence, for, at the instigation of some of the more bigoted papists, the scholars of the college of Navarre, in concert with their regents, performed a farce in which Marguerite was transformed into a fury of hell. François I., greatly indignant, sent his archers to arrest the offenders, who further provoked his anger by resistance, and only obtained their pardon through the generous intercession of the princess whom they had so grossly insulted.
Marguerite was herself a poetess, and she loved above all things those gay, and seldom very delicate, stories, the telling of which was at that time one of the favourite amusements of the evening, and one in which she was known to excel. Her poetical writings were collected and printed, under her own authority, in 1547, by her then valet-de-chambre, Jean de la Haye, who dedicated the volume to her daughter. They are all graceful, and some of them worthy of the best poets of her time. The title of this collection was, punning upon her name, which means a pearl, “Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses, très illustre reyne de Navarre.” Marguerite’s stories (nouvelles) were more celebrated than her verses, and are said to have been committed to writing under her own dictation. All the ladies of her court possessed copies of them in writing. It is understood to have been her intention to form them into ten days’ tales, of ten in each day, so as to resemble the “Decameron” of Boccaccio, but only eight days were finished at the time of her death, and the imperfect work was published posthumously by her valet-de-chambre, Claude Gruget, under the title of “L’Heptameron, ou Histoire des Amants Fortunés.” It is by far the best collection of stories of the sixteenth century. They are told charmingly, in language which is a perfect model of French composition of that age, but they are all tales of gallantry such as could only be repeated in polite society in an age which was essentially licentious. Queen Marguerite died on the 21st of December, 1549, and was buried in the cathedral of Pau. Her death was a subject of regret to all that was good and all that was poetic, not only in France, but in Europe, which had been accustomed to look upon her as the tenth Muse and the fourth Grace:—
Musarum decima et Charitum quarta, inclyta regum
Et soror et conjux, Marguaris illa jacet.
Before Marguerite’s death, her literary circle had been broken up by the hatred of religious persecutors. Already, in 1536, the imprudent boldness of Marot had rendered it impossible to protect him any longer, and he had been obliged to retire to a place of concealment, from whence he sometimes paid a stealthy visit to her court. His place of valet-de-chambre was given to a man of talents, even more remarkable, and who shared equally the personal esteem of the queen of Navarre, Bonaventure des Periers. Marot’s successor paid a graceful compliment to him in a short poem entitled “L’Apologie de Marot absent,” published in 1537. The earlier part of the year following witnessed the publication of the most remarkable work of Bonaventure des Periers, the “Cymbalum Mundi,” concerning the real character of which writers are still divided in opinion. In it Des Periers introduced a new form of satire, imitated from the dialogues of Lucian. The book consists of four dialogues, written in language which forms a model of French composition, the personages introduced in them intended evidently to represent living characters, whose names are concealed in anagrams and other devices, among whom was Clement Marot. It was the boldest declaration of scepticism which had yet issued from the Epicurean school represented by Rabelais. The author sneers at the Romish church as an imposture, ridicules the Protestants as seekers after the philosopher’s stone, and shows disrespect to Christianity itself. Such a book could hardly be published in Paris with impunity, yet it was printed there, secretly, it is said, by a well-known bookseller, Jean Morin, in the Rue St. Jacques, and therefore in the immediate vicinity of the persecuting Sorbonne. Private information had been given of the character of this work, possibly by the printer himself or by one of his men, and on the 6th of March, 1538, when it was on the eve of publication, the whole impression was seized at the printer’s, and Morin himself was arrested and thrown into prison. He was treated rigorously, and is understood to have escaped only by disavowing all knowledge of the character of the book, and giving up the name of the author. The first edition of the “Cymbalum Mundi” was burnt, and Bonaventure des Periers, alarmed by the personal dangers in which he was thus involved, retired from the court of the queen of Navarre, and took refuge in the city of Lyons, where liberal opinions at that time found a greater degree of tolerance than elsewhere. There he printed a second edition of the “Cymbalum Mundi,” which also was burnt, and copies of either edition are now excessively rare.[98] Bonaventure des Periers felt so much the weight of the persecution in which he had now involved himself, that, in the year 1539, as far as can be ascertained, he put an end to his own existence. This event cast a gloom over the court of the queen of Navarre, from which it seems never to have entirely recovered. The school of scepticism to which Des Periers belonged had now fallen into equal discredit with Catholics and Protestants, and the latter looked upon Marguerite herself, who had latterly conformed outwardly with Romanism, as an apostate from their cause. Henri Estienne, in his “Apologie pour Herodote,” speaks of the “Cymbalum Mundi” as an infamous book.
Bonaventure des Periers left behind him another work more amusing to us at the present day, and more characteristic of the literary tastes of the court of Marguerite of Navarre. This is a collection of facetious stories, which was published several years after the death of its author, under the title of “Les Contes, ou Les Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis de Bonaventure des Periers.” They have some resemblance in style to the stories of the Heptameron, but are shorter, and rather more facetious, and are characterised by their bitter spirit of satire against the monks and popish clergy. Some of these stories remind us, in their peculiar character and tone, of the “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,” as, for an example, the following, which is given as an anecdote of the curé de Brou:—
“This curé had a way of his own to chant the different offices of the church, and above all he disliked the way of saying the Passion in the manner it was ordinarily said in churches, and he chanted it quite differently. For when our Lord said anything to the Jews, or to Pilate, he made him talk high and loud, so that everybody could hear him, and when it was the Jews or somebody else who spoke, he spoke so low that he could hardly be heard at all. It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Châteaudun, to keep there the festival of Easter, passed through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o’clock in the morning, and, wishing to hear service, she went to the church where the curé was officiating. When it came to the Passion, he said it in his own manner, and made the whole church ring again when he said Quem quæritis? But when it came to the reply, Jesum Nazarenum, he spoke as low as he possibly could. And in this manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout, and, for a woman, well informed in the holy scriptures, and attentive to the ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised at this mode of chanting, and wished she had never entered the church. She had a mind to speak to the curé, and tell him what she thought of it; and for this purpose sent for him to come to her after the service. When he came, she said to him, ‘Monsieur le Curé, I don’t know where you learnt to officiate on a day like this, when the people ought to be all humility; but to hear you perform the service, is enough to drive away anybody’s devotion.’ ‘How so, madame?’ said the curé. ‘How so?’ said she, ‘you have said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord speaks, you cry as if you were in the town-hall; and when it is a Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young bride. Is this becoming in one like you? are you fit to be a curé? If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault!’ When the curé had very attentively listened to her, he said, ‘Is this what you had to say to me, madame? By my soul! it is very true, what they say; and the truth is, that there are many people who talk of things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe that I know my office as well as another, and I beg all the world to know that God is as well served in this parish according to its condition, as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well that the other curés chant the Passion quite differently; I could easily chant it like them if I would; but they do not understand their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord! No, no, madame; rest assured that in my parish it is my will that God be the master, and He shall be as long as I live; and let the others do in their parishes according to their understanding.’”