Lyons, situated in the center of the valley of the Rhone, was an ideal city for a man who cared for belles lettres. Italy was nearby. A few days easy travel carried the traveler to the Provence and although the ancient paradise of the Troubadours had suffered dreadfully at the hands of the Inquisition, the grand old literary tradition had not yet been entirely lost. Furthermore, the printing-presses of Lyons were famous for the excellence of their product and her book stores were well stocked with all the latest publications. When one of the master printers, Sebastian Gryphius by name, looked for some one to edit his collection of medieval classics, it was natural that he should bethink himself of the new doctor who was also known as a scholar. He hired Rabelais and set him to work. In rapid succession almanachs and chap-books followed upon the learned treatises of Galen and Hippocrates. And out of these inconspicuous beginnings grew that strange tome which was to make its author one of the most popular writers of his time. The same talent for novelty which had turned Rabelais into a successful medical practitioner brought him his success as a novelist. He did what few people had dared to do before him. He began to write in the language of his own people. He broke with a thousand-year-old tradition which insisted that the books of a learned man must be in a tongue unknown to the vulgar multitude. He used French and, furthermore, he used the unadorned vernacular of the year 1532. I gladly leave it to the professors of literature to decide where and how and when Rabelais discovered his two pet heroes, Gargantua and Pantagruel. Maybe they were old heathenish Gods who, after the nature of their species, had managed to live through fifteen hundred years of Christian persecution and neglect. Then again, he may have invented them in an outburst of gigantic hilarity. However that be, Rabelais contributed enormously to the gayety of nations and greater praise no author can gain than that he has added something to the sum total of human laughter. But at the same time, his works were not funny books in the terrible modern sense of the word. They had their serious side and struck a bold blow for the cause of tolerance by their caricature of the people who were responsible for that clerical reign of terror which caused such untold misery during the first fifty years of the sixteenth century. Rabelais, a skillfully trained theologian, was able to avoid all such direct statements as might have got him into trouble, and acting upon the principle that one cheerful humorist out of jail is better than a dozen gloomy reformers behind the bars, refrained from a too brazen exposition of his highly unorthodox opinions.