would, and in fifteen hundred and fifty-one
he was even made royal professor, a new
chair being instituted for him.

Yet he must still be dabbling in fresh
innovations. The university pronounced the
letter Q in quisquis and quinquam, &c., as
kiskis kinkam, and mihi was made into
michi. Ramus set lance in rest against the
degraded Q, and taught quisquis and quinquam
as pronounced at this day. Parliament
was appealed to on the point in the case of
a certain ecclesiastic who had fallen into the
great Q heresy, and whom the Sorbonne
wished to deprive of his benefices therefor.
But Ramus and the Q-ites rallied round him,
and having proved to parliament that its
mission was to make laws and royal
ordinances, not to discuss grammatical rules, a
decree was passed not only releasing the
imprisoned ecclesiastic, but granting to all
present and to come, full liberty to pronounce
quisquis and quinquam as seemed best to
themselves, without fear of persecution or
imprisonment. So ended this fight. Ramus
made a grand coup on the occasion of Charles
the Ninth's accession to the throne. The
heretical philosopher, pro-Socratic and
anti-Aristotelian as he was, was deputed by the
university to obtain from the young monarch
the ratification of Our Daughter's privileges.
Ramus not only perfectly succeeded in his mission,
but even brought back part of the funds
set apart for his journey, which, touching the
learned corporation in its most sensitive part,
gained over all his old enemies, save
Charpentier; and he who had said that Ramus
was an atheist, a second Diagoras or
Theodorus, Un maître de deux liards (a twopenny
halfpenny fellow), an ignorant man, as foolish
as he was unintelligent, malicious, slandering,
passionate, stupid, ignorant, calumnious,
rash, impudent, a madman, a fop, a firebrand,
a wretch, a scoundrel, and an impudent
rascal, a dog always ready to bark and bite,
a harpy who sullied everything he touched,
a pest, a scourge, and a viper vomiting floods
of poison, was not likely to be soon appeased.
Pleasant times these between philosophers!
not much of the humanities or the amenities
of literature in them. But passing by this
enmity, these were the halcyon days of De
la Ramus' life. The wars of the Ligue had
not yet broken out, and the Huguenot and
the liberal were still safe. Charles de
Lorraine was still his friend. That Cardinal,
beautiful, elegant, learned and crafty,
debauched and gallant, brave and cruel, at
once the pride and the shame, the strength
and the weakness of the church he adorned
and helped to disturb; he had leisure for
reading and writing, permission to teach and
instruct; he believed in what he said, and he
practised what he believed; he lived a life
after his own heart, and he asked nothing
beyond what he possessed. Neither before
nor since was there such a calm clear horizon
in his life as in those first years of Charles
the Ninth's reign. But Ramus must needs
prepare fresh troubles for himself; Ramus
must needs examine into the Huguenot
doctrines, and the anti-Aristotelian soon
became an anti-Papist. No wonder that he
and other learned men turned away from the
ignorant, corrupt, orthodox church, for Jean
de Montluc, Bishop of Valence, asserted, that
out of ten priests not eight could read; and
if such testimony could be borne by one of
themselves, what must have been the truth?
The reformed religion began then to attract
attention, and in fifteen hundred and sixty-one
the famous colloquy of Poissy was held
between Théodore de Béza and Charles de
Lorraine, wherein the arguments of the
Cardinal, not the advocacy of Béza, converted
Ramus to the Huguenot faith, as he
states in his letter of justification to the
Cardinal.

Ramus embraced Protestantism with all
the warmth and passion of his nature; and,
under the enlightened protection of Michel
de I'Hôpital, he and the rest of the Huguenots
lived for a time in peace and safety. The
famous edict of the seventeenth of January,
fifteen hundred and sixty-two, acknowledging
the right of the Protestants to religious
liberty and the unfettered exercise of their
own rites, was gained by de I'Hôpital. "When
promulgated, the pupils of Ramus at his
college of Presle took away or broke the
images and statues in the chapel. A tumult
of course arose, and Ramus was denounced
as an iconoclast; but he got clear out of the
scrape for the time, though Chapentier and
others had their eyes on him. Religious
feelings now began to run high. The Duc
de Guise said in full parliament that not
only was his voice for forcing every Frenchman
to be a catholic or an exile, but that his
sword should not hang long in its scabbard
if this movement were not repressed. Ramus
was alarmed. Always a favourite with the
young king and his mother, he obtained a
safe-conduct, and took refuge at Fontainebleau.
Hunted out from thence he went to
Vincennes, and from Vincennes wherever
safety and shelter could be found until the
peace of Amboise allowed him to return to
Paris, where he quarrelled with the Jesuits,
and opposed the elevation of Charpentier to
a mathematical chair on the grounds of that
professor's confession that he knew nothing
of Greek or mathematics, that he had even a
profound contempt for mathematics, which
he said was child's play compared to the
noble study of metaphysics, a stye wherein
only one hog (Ramus) could disport himself.
About this time came an armed man to
teach moderation to the anti-Aristotelian.
Ramus disarmed, whipped, and turned him
out of the college. The academy also rose
against the college of Presle, and there was
a fine tumult one day and a score of broken
heads in the college-court. But Ramus
made them all a sensible speech; so the