Two of his boon companions at the University were Antoine Saporta, who afterwards became Dean of the Faculty, and Guillaume Rondelet; with these men he inaugurated at Montpellier theatrical representations with a medical leaning. He wrote some celebrated farces, among others “The Dumb Wife” (_La Femme Mute_), in which he himself assumed a leading _role_—a farce which is related, as to plot, in “Pantagruel,” by Panurge, under the title of “History of a Good Husband who Espoused a Dumb Wife.” The following is an extract: “Now, the good husband wished that his wife might speak, and, thanks to the skill of a doctor and surgeon, who cut a piece from under the tongue, the woman commenced to talk, and she talked and talked with recovered speech, as though to make up for lost time, until the husband returned to the doctor for a remedy to keep his wife’s mouth shut. The physician responded that he had proper remedies for making women speak, but no remedy had ever been discovered to keep a wife’s tongue quiet. The only thing he could suggest to the husband was for the latter to become deaf in order not to hear the woman’s voice. The old reprobate submitted to an operation in order to be deaf, and, when the physician demanded his fee for professional services, the husband answered that he was too deaf to hear anything.” Then the doctor, in order to make the man pay his bill, strove to restore his hearing by forcing drugs down the husband’s throat, whereupon both husband and wife fell on the physician and surgeon and so beat both medical men with clubs that they were left for dead. This farce was played at Montpellier by a company of medical students, and enjoyed an immense run of success. It was this farce that helped Moliere out in one of his scenes in his famous play “Medecin malgre lui.” His literary productions, strange to say, did not injure his scientific work meantime. During the time he resided at Montpellier he published a translation of some of the works of Hippocrates and Galen, and also commenced his “Pantagruel,” in which medical history may find some valuable documents, for he showed himself to be in every line not only a physician but a philosopher.[104] We will not return to this, as it is too long, and would take an infinity of time to recall his anatomical erudition, and it is needless to say he dissected as well as he wrote. A very just conception of his style is obtained from the description of the combat between Brother John and the soldiers of Pichrocole, who had invaded the Abbey of Seville, a description which is terminated in these droll lines: “Some died without speaking, others spoke without dying; some died in speaking, others spoke in dying.”