young orthodox assailants of the heretics
of Presle went quietly back to their humanities,
and no more harm was done for that
day.

In fifteen hundred and sixty-seven the
civil war broke out again, and Ramus took
refuge at Saint Dénis, in the camp of the
Prince de Condé; and after a ramble in
Switzerland, where Béza, though a Huguenot,
refused to countenance him because he was
an anti-Aristotelian, and where Quinger sat
at his feet, he returned to France, in fifteen
hundred and seventy; peace between the
churches militant allowing him to do so.
Charpentier had worked well in his absence;
he returned only to trials and persecutions.
He appealed to Charles de Lorraine; but the
Cardinal, angry at his religious defection,
accused him of "ingratitude, rebellion, and
impiety." Ramus, in a letter full of force
and beauty, explained how that he had only
returned to the old faith, and that he himself,
Cardinal-Archbishop, had helped him in his
conversion by his magnificent colloquy of
Poissy. But this did no good. The friend
had disappeared, so nothing was left but the
offended priest of a deserted altar. He then
sought to go to Geneva; but there Béza
opposed him. He would have none of him,
heretic in dialectics that he was. However,
the queen-mother of the young king, not
entirely unmindful of their old affection,
secured him an honourable retreat, on the
condition of silence, and the abandonment of
philosophic discussions.

On the seventeenth of August, fifteen hundred
and seventy-two, Jean de Montluc and
a numerous train went on their way to
Poland, to prepare for the regal election of
Henry of Anjou. Montluc urged Ramus to
accompany him; warmly and with all his
ancient friendship. He probably knew enough
of the future to make him desirous of placing
his old friend and fellow-learner in a place of
safety. But Ramus had his books to write,
and his own life to lead on French soil, and
he refused to throw in his lot with the active
party of politicians, or to mix himself up in
court intrigues. So Jean de Montluc went
without him; and on the twenty-third, six
days after his departure, the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew began. Three days after
the massacre, and when the popular fury had
somewhat cooled, three men armed to the
teeth rushed into De la Ramée’s apartment.
One ruffian fired at him—he, on his knees,
praying for their pardon as well as his own
—and the ball lodged in the wall behind
him; another then cut him down, but did
not kill him; and then they flung him out
of the window (his apartment was on the
fifth story), and he fell palpitating and still
breathing, on the stones of the college court.

They tied him with cords, and dragged him
through the streets to the Seine; when a
surgeon cut off his head, and the body was
cast into the river. The waves washed up
the corpse, and Catholic children beat it with
rods. Charpentier was shrewdly suspected
of this murder. He died a short time after
of fever; and on his death-bed, he boasted
"that he still carried it over Ramus, for
that he died ignobly by water, while he,
Charpentier, was perishing gloriously by
fire."

Ramus was tall, well-made, and handsome;
with a large head, black hair, and a
magnificent beard, a broad forehead, aquiline
nose, black, and lively eyes; of a pale olive
complexion, and of great masculine beauty.
His mouth was pleasant and handsome, his
voice grave and mild; he was simple in dress,
in manner carrying his head high, and somewhat
stern. He was a true ascetic, flying
all sensual pleasures, sleeping on straw, rising
at cock-crow, and drinking only water; proud
of not selling his eloquence, and holding his
art and duty of teaching as high as a priestly
office; educating many himself, who could
not afford the expense of a college career,
and with others, assisting them both with
money and advice; in a word, as Voltaire
said of him, he was "a virtuous man in an
age of crimes, an amiable man in society, and
even a bel esprit." He founded a Chair of
Ramus for natural sciences, which lasted to
the first French Revolution; he introduced
the study of Greek into the university of
Paris, and substituted j and v for i and u
(these are often called the Ramist letters),
and was the first who wrote k for cque. It
was Ramus who demanded a translation of
the Bible into the vulgar tongue, who wrote
a French grammar, solved, explained, and
popularised Euclid, introduced science among
those interminable metaphysics, and, though
preceded by Abélard and Erasmus, yet did
such service to truth and intellectual freedom
as not all the reprobation of Béza, nor the
adverse verdict of our own Bacon, can
obscure or destroy. Amongst those strangely
unreal beings, the schoolmen of the sixteenth
century, he stands out as a true man; throwing
a human heart into the dry bones of
pedantry, and letting in the light of nature
among the cobwebs of sophistry and
metaphysics which clouded men's minds.
Forgotten now, and the work which he did
dwarfed by the greater labours of others, he
yet is entitled to our respect, and to our
remembrance; for his was no mean life
while it lasted. It was one of the earliest
dedications to freedom of thought and speech,
and he one of the noblest pioneers of human
progress and intellectual truth that history
can give us.

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