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This article looks at the collections, and the collecting habits, of two sixteenth-century Frenchmen: the lawyer Pierre de l'Estoile and the surgeon François Rasse des Noeux. Both men were virtuoso collectors of 'outspoken words', the circumstantial pamphlets, songs, libels, graffiti, and whispered rumours that characterized the French Wars of Religion. Both men organized their collections in ways to give them coherence and meaning. In the case of L'Estoile, the collected ephemera were accompanied by a Register-Journal and Memoires, which reflect on his collecting process and the dangers of owning a potentially scandalous and actionable collection. The article ends with some reflections on the hunt for meanings by modern students of this circumstantial material, and argues that often this 'meaning' is to be found in the culture of collecting itself, rather than in unravelling specific mysteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]