Incomprehensible, an unexplainable enigma, a chimera with a woman's head and a reptile's feet: La Bruyère's descriptions of a monstrous Rabelais, an amalgam of beauty and corruption, are often cited as evidence of the puzzlement felt by readers seeking to classify this unclassifiable work. Even a wit and satirist of the stature of Voltaire asserted in 1732 that Rabelais contained so much obscenity and ordure that seven-eighths of his book should be crossed out. Does this view hold true for readers across the past five centuries? To judge by the large number of early editions and imitations, some pirated or with false imprints, the chronicles were a great publishing success, but little is known about the first readers, or the target public. Evidence of the taste of the minute proportion of the population that was literate is preserved in surviving lists of private French Renaissance libraries. About a dozen mention Rabelais, and they belong to a silk merchant, a royal official, three magistrates, two advocates, a notary, a bookseller, and two women (wives of a magistrate and a bookseller, who may have inherited them from their husbands). This may point to lawyers as Rabelais's early readers, and there are indeed plenty of jokes more readily understood by lawyers; but other lists show that Rabelais was also owned by royalty, including Henri IV and Charles I of England.