Gargantua and Pantagruel | Page 7

Forest of Meudon, whereas the presbytery was close to
the chateau. From that time legend has fastened on Rabelais, has
completely travestied him, till, bit by bit, it has made of him a buffoon,
a veritable clown, a vagrant, a glutton, and a drunkard.
The likeness of his person has undergone a similar metamorphosis. He
has been credited with a full moon of a face, the rubicund nose of an
incorrigible toper, and thick coarse lips always apart because always
laughing. The picture would have surprised his friends no less than
himself. There have been portraits painted of Rabelais; I have seen
many such. They are all of the seventeenth century, and the greater
number are conceived in this jovial and popular style.
As a matter of fact there is only one portrait of him that counts, that has
more than the merest chance of being authentic, the one in the
Chronologie collee or coupee. Under this double name is known and
cited a large sheet divided by lines and cross lines into little squares,
containing about a hundred heads of illustrious Frenchmen. This sheet
was stuck on pasteboard for hanging on the wall, and was cut in little
pieces, so that the portraits might be sold separately. The majority of
the portraits are of known persons and can therefore be verified. Now it
can be seen that these have been selected with care, and taken from the
most authentic sources; from statues, busts, medals, even stained glass,
for the persons of most distinction, from earlier engravings for the
others. Moreover, those of which no other copies exist, and which are
therefore the most valuable, have each an individuality very distinct, in
the features, the hair, the beard, as well as in the costume. Not one of

them is like another. There has been no tampering with them, no
forgery. On the contrary, there is in each a difference, a very marked
personality. Leonard Gaultier, who published this engraving towards
the end of the sixteenth century, reproduced a great many portraits
besides from chalk drawings, in the style of his master, Thomas de Leu.
It must have been such drawings that were the originals of those
portraits which he alone has issued, and which may therefore be as
authentic and reliable as the others whose correctness we are in a
position to verify.
Now Rabelais has here nothing of the Roger Bontemps of low degree
about him. His features are strong, vigorously cut, and furrowed with
deep wrinkles; his beard is short and scanty; his cheeks are thin and
already worn-looking. On his head he wears the square cap of the
doctors and the clerks, and his dominant expression, somewhat rigid
and severe, is that of a physician and a scholar. And this is the only
portrait to which we need attach any importance.
This is not the place for a detailed biography, nor for an exhaustive
study. At most this introduction will serve as a framework on which to
fix a few certain dates, to hang some general observations. The date of
Rabelais' birth is very doubtful. For long it was placed as far back as
1483: now scholars are disposed to put it forward to about 1495. The
reason, a good one, is that all those whom he has mentioned as his
friends, or in any real sense his contemporaries, were born at the very
end of the fifteenth century. And, indeed, it is in the references in his
romance to names, persons, and places, that the most certain and
valuable evidence is to be found of his intercourse, his patrons, his
friendships, his sojournings, and his travels: his own work is the best
and richest mine in which to search for the details of his life.
Like Descartes and Balzac, he was a native of Touraine, and Tours and
Chinon have only done their duty in each of them erecting in recent
years a statue to his honour, a twofold homage reflecting credit both on
the province and on the town. But the precise facts about his birth are
nevertheless vague. Huet speaks of the village of Benais, near
Bourgeuil, of whose vineyards Rabelais makes mention. As the little

vineyard of La Deviniere, near Chinon, and familiar to all his readers,
is supposed to have belonged to his father, Thomas Rabelais, some
would have him born there. It is better to hold to the earlier general
opinion that Chinon was his native town; Chinon, whose praises he
sang with such heartiness and affection. There he might well have been
born in the Lamproie house, which belonged to his father, who, to
judge from this circumstance, must have been in easy circumstances,
with the position of a well-to-do citizen. As La Lamproie in the
seventeenth century was a hostelry, the