The work was an enormous one, but the best part of it is Le Duchat's, and what is not his is too often absolutely hypothetical and beside the truth.

Le Duchat had already given too much importance to the false historical explanation.

Here it is constantly coming in, and it rests on no evidence.
In reality, there is no need of the key to Rabelais by which to discover the meaning of subtle allusions.

He is neither so complicated nor so full of riddles.

We know how he has scattered the names of contemporaries about his work, sometimes of friends, sometimes of enemies, and without disguising them under any mask.