Horrible was the state of France in those times of the wars of religion which began in 1562; the times which are spoken of usually as “The Troubles,” as if men did not wish to allude to them too openly.  Then, and afterwards in the wars of the League, deeds were done for which language has no name.  The population decreased.  The land lay untilled.  The fair face of France was blackened with burnt homesteads and ruined towns.  Ghastly corpses dangled in rows upon the trees, or floated down the blood-stained streams.  Law and order were at an end.  Bands of robbers prowled in open day, and bands of wolves likewise.  But all through the horrors of the troubles we catch sight of the little fat doctor riding all unarmed to see his patients throughout Languedoc; going vast distances, his biographers say, by means of regular relays of horses, till he too broke down.  Well, for him, perhaps, that he broke down when he did; for capture and recapture, massacre and pestilence, were the fate of Montpellier and the surrounding country, till the better times of Henry IV. and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, when liberty of worship was given to the Protestants for awhile.

In the burning summer of 1566, Rondelet went a long journey to Toulouse, seemingly upon an errand of charity, to settle some law affairs for his relations.  The sanitary state of the southern cities is bad enough still.  It must have been horrible in those days of barbarism and misrule.  Dysentery was epidemic at Toulouse then, and Rondelet took it.  He knew from the first that he should die.  He was worn out, it is said, by over-exertion; by sorrow for the miseries of the land; by fruitless struggles to keep the peace, and to strive for moderation in days when men were all immoderate.  But he rode away a day’s journey—­he took two days over it, so weak he was—­in the blazing July sun, to a friend’s sick wife at Realmont, and there took to his bed, and died a good man’s death.  The details of his death and last illness were written and published by his cousin Claude Formy; and well worth reading they are to any man who wishes to know how to die.  Rondelet would have no tidings of his illness sent to Montpellier.  He was happy, he said, in dying away from the tears of his household, and “safe from insult.”  He dreaded, one may suppose, lest priests and friars should force their way to his bedside, and try to extort some recantation from the great savant, the honour and glory of their city.  So they sent for no priest to Realmont; but round his bed a knot of Calvinist gentlemen and ministers read the Scriptures, and sang David’s psalms, and prayed; and Rondelet prayed with them through long agonies, and so went home to God.