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 the scholars—­a post which brought him in a small fee on each matriculation—­and that year he took a fee, among others, from one of the most remarkable men of that or of any age, Francois Rabelais himself.

And what shall I say of him?—­who stands alone, like Shakespeare, in his generation; possessed of colossal learning—­of all science which could be gathered in his days—­of practical and statesmanlike wisdom—­of knowledge of languages, ancient and modern, beyond all his compeers—­of eloquence, which when he speaks of pure and noble things becomes heroic, and, as it were, inspired—­of scorn for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance—­of esteem, genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,—­and all this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill.  He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr,