Notes

n’eschauffement

Ni eschauffement.

Incombustible

We pass over the gross and idle buffoneries which Rabelais is said to have permitted himself at his first audience of the pope, and towards his person. They are too coarse to be mentioned, and too inconsistent with the probabilities of place and person to be believed. One anecdote only may be excepted, as not altogether incredible. The pope, it is said, expressed his willingness to grant Rabelais a favour, and he, in reply, begged his holiness to excommunicate him. Being asked whey he preferred so strange a request, he accounted for it by saying, that some very honest gentlemen of his acquaintance in Touraine had been burnt, and finding it a common saying it Italy, when a faggot would not take fire, that it was excommunicated by the pope’s own mouth, he wished to be rendered incombustible by the same process.