Desperiers, to speak truth, was in far more danger of the stake than
most of his friends. The infidelity of Rabelais is a matter of inference
only, and some critics (among whom the present writer ranks himself) see
in his daring ridicule of existing abuses nothing inconsistent with a
perfectly sound, if liberally conditioned, orthodoxy. Desperiers, like
Rabelais, was a Lucianist, but his modernising of Lucian (the remarkable
book called _Cymbalum Mundi_), though pretending to deal with ancient
mythology, has an almost unmistakable reference to revealed religion.
It is not, however, by this work or by this side of his character at all
that Desperiers is brought into connection with the work of Margaret,
who, if learned and liberal, and sometimes tending to the new ideas in
religion, was always devout and always orthodox in fundamentals. Besides
the _Cymbalum Mundi_, he has left a curious book, not published, like
the _Heptameron_ itself, till long after his own death, and entitled
_Nouvelles Recreations et Joyeux Devis_.
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