One of the best caricatures--perhaps the very best--which the Reformation called forth was suggested by the dissensions that arose between the followers of Luther and Calvin when both of them were in the grave. It might have amused the very persons caricatured. We can fancy Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics all laughing together at the spectacle of the two reformers holding the Pope by the ear, and with their other hands fighting one another, Luther clawing at Calvin's beard, and Calvin hurling a Bible at Luther's head. On the same sheet in the original drawing a second picture was given, in which a shepherd was seen on his knees, surrounded by his flock, addressing the Lord, who is visible in the sky. Underneath is written, "The Lord is my Shepherd; he will never forsake me." The work has an additional interest as showing how early the French began to excel in caricature. In the German and English caricatures of that period there are no existing specimens which equal this one in effective simplicity. [Illustration: Calvin, the Pope, and Luther. (Paris, 1600.)] Perhaps the all-pervading influence of Rabelais in that age may have made French satire more good-humored. After all efforts to discover in the works of Rabelais hidden allusions to the great personages and events of his time, we must remain of the opinion that he was a fun-maker pure and simple, a court-fool to his century. The anecdote related of his convent life seems to give us the key both to his character and his writings. The incident has often been used in comedy since Rabelais employed it. On the festival of St. Francis, to whom his convent was dedicated, when the country people came in, laden with votive offerings, to pray before the image of the saint, young Rabelais removed the image from its dimly lighted recess and mounted himself upon the pedestal, attired in suitable costume. Group after group of awkward rustics approached and paid their homage. Rabelais at length, overcome by the ridiculous demeanor of the worshipers, was obliged to laugh, whereupon the gaping throng cried out, "A miracle! a miracle! Our good lord St. Francis moves!" But a cunning old friar, who knew when miracles might and might not be rationally expected in that convent, ran into the chapel and drew out the merry saint, and the brothers laid their knotted cords so vigorously across his naked shoulders that he had a lively sense of not being made of wood. That was Rabelais! He was a natural laugh-compeller. He laughed at every thing, and set his countrymen laughing at every thing. But there were no men who oftener provoked his derision than the monks. "How is it?" asks one of his merry men, "that people exclude monks from all good companies, calling them feast-troublers, marrers of mirth, and disturbers of all civil conversation, as bees drive away the drones from their hives?" The hero answers this question in three pages of most Rabelaisan abuse, of which only a very few lines are quotable.