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 Montaigne and medicine; 
 
 3 1924 027 969 934 
 
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MONTAIGNE 
 
MONTAIGNE 
 
 Being the Essayist's Comments on con- 
 temporary Physic and Physicians; his 
 Thoughts on many material Matters 
 relating to Life and Death; an Account 
 of his bodily Ailments and Peculiarities 
 and of bis Travels in Search of Health 
 
 By 
 James Spottiswoode Taylor 
 
 COMMANDER, MEDICAL CORPS, U. S. NAVY, M.D., 
 
 f.a.c.s., member societe fran9aise 
 d'histoire de la MEDECINE 
 
 I 
 
 PAUL B. HOEBER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ) wt V 1 ir.il 
 
l\52.v«BZX 
 
 Copyright 1921, 1922 
 By Paul B. Hoeber 
 
 Reprintedt with additional illustrations, from 
 
 Annals of Medical History (Volume III, Nos. 2, 3, 4) 
 
 Published November, 1922 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
To 
 
 Dr. Hiram Rittenhouse Loux 
 
 of Philadelphia 
 
 who ministers with consummate skill to forms 
 
 of suffering for which there was no relief 
 
 in Montaigne's day 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 NO MATTER how soon the adult 
 reader is introduced to Montaigne 
 he will always regret not having 
 come earlier under the spell of this 
 rare spirit. Of all the philosophers of the 
 past not one makes as strong an appeal 
 to the physician as Montaigne. He was for 
 years a great sufferer from maladies which 
 the profession could not alleviate and so we 
 are, in a sense, his debtors. Like the true phy- 
 sician he held everything sub judice, unable 
 to declare that the last word had been said, 
 unwilling to speak with finality on the thou- 
 sand and one things which he observed and 
 studied. In analyzing human thought and 
 conduct he was a model for the physician 
 who studies pathology and symptoms, and 
 many are the analogies between his situa- 
 tion, his mode of thought, his character and 
 temperament and those of the profession. ' 
 He recorded truthfully the phenomena that 
 
 ^ Under the guise of a mere man of the world 
 expressing natural thoughts in a common language, 
 Montaigne concealed a spirit of lofty and audacious 
 inquiry. Buckle. 
 
 [vii] 
 
4 viiij" 
 
 came within the range of his faculties, fear- 
 less of the deductions others might make 
 from them and withal modest in the expres- 
 sion of his own.^ Right or wrong he wrote 
 "in good faith." 
 
 Like the medical writer handicapped by 
 an ever-changing vehicle of expression, an 
 ever-altering nomenclature and phraseology 
 liable to leave him stranded in the ranks of 
 the obsolete, Montaigne wrote while the 
 French language was in transition, an un- 
 stable medium; wrote with a brightness, a 
 lightness of touch, an insouciance without 
 precedent or imitation, he and Rabelais 
 being the last to fashion its plastic shape 
 before the stabilizing influence of the Acad- 
 emy.' But his homely, graphic phrases, his 
 
 ^ He was very cautious, and yet he was very bold. 
 He was cautious, since he would not believe strange 
 things because they had been handed down by his 
 forefathers; and he was bold, since he was undaunted 
 by the reproaches. with which the ignorant, who love 
 to dogmatize, always cover those whose knowledge 
 makes them ready to doubt. Buckle. 
 
 Lamartine described Montesquieu and Mon- 
 taigne as "those two great republicans of French 
 thought." (Histoire des Girondins.) 
 
 ' Depuis Rabelais et Montaigne les progr^s de la 
 langue ont fait perdre bien des vieilles richesses. 
 George Sand: La Mare au Diable. 
 
4 ix Is- 
 
 vivid touch, will always be in fashion like 
 the language of the King James version 
 of the Bible. And so, in medicine, we shall 
 always know what our predecessors meant 
 by a clyster whether it be the passing 
 fashion to say enema or enema. Montaigne's 
 style was simple in so far that he was guilty 
 of no affectation, no striving for effect. 
 "May I use no words but those which are 
 current in the Paris markets," he explained; 
 and medical writers who cannot call a spade 
 a spade, who prefer "ecchymosis of the 
 subpalpebral areolar tissue" to "a black 
 eye," should take a leaf from his notebook. 
 Montaigne in his "Essays" pretends to 
 no epoch-making discovery in the realms 
 of human thought and claims to enunciate 
 nothing novel or startling.* His study was 
 mankind, with himself as the readiest sub- 
 ject of practical dissection. His comments are 
 like the clinical notes of the general practi- 
 tioner and if his writings were to become 
 inaccessible to the modern reader we would 
 still be under obligations to him for all the 
 
 *0n the contrary, Buckle, in his "History of 
 Civilization in England," says: "The publication 
 of the essays of Montaigne forms an epoch not only 
 in the literature but in the civilization of France." 
 
4 X Is- 
 
 delightful things that have been written 
 about him and them. Many are the hypoth- 
 eses and speculations he builds on the 
 data acquired. A further analogy between 
 Montaigne and the general run of physicians 
 is that he had to take many of his authori- 
 ties at secondhand. He read his favorite 
 Plutarch in Amyot's translation for he knew 
 no Greek. Just as we must accept the dicta 
 of technical investigators and sometimes 
 be compelled to hear them confuted, Mon- 
 taigne was at least once openly confronted 
 with Amyot's mistakes, and he still suffers 
 for the inaccuracy of those he quoted. 
 
 Like the average doctor, Montaigne was 
 a poor business man and but for an efficient, 
 capable and faithful wife his estate would 
 have gone to pot. He wrote a bad hand, was 
 extremely forgetful and strangely impracti- 
 cal in many of the ordinary affairs of life. A 
 few passages which follow give his own 
 estimate of his shortcomings. 
 
 There is not a man living, whom it would so 
 little become to speak of memory as myself, for 
 I have none at all; and do not think that the 
 world has again another so treacherous as 
 mine. (Of Liars.) 
 
 Agility and address I never had and yet am 
 
4 xi li- 
 the son of a very active and spritely father, 
 and that continued to be so to an extreme old 
 age. I have seldom known any man of his 
 condition, his equal in all bodily exercises: 
 as I have seldom met with any who have 
 not excelled me, except in running, at which I 
 was pretty good. In music or singing, for which 
 I have a very unfit voice, or to play on any 
 sort of instrument, they could never teach me 
 anything. . . . My hands are so clumsy, that I can- 
 not so much as write so as to read it myself, 
 so that I had rather do what I have scribbled 
 over again, than to take upon me the trouble to 
 correct it, and do not read much better than I 
 write. I cannot handsomely fold up a letter, nor 
 could ever make a pen, or carve at table worth 
 a pin, nor saddle a horse, nor carry a hawk, and 
 fly her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk, 
 nor speak to a horse. In fine, my bodily qualities 
 are very well suited to those of my soul, there is 
 nothing spritely, only a full and firm vigor. I 
 am patient enough of labor and pains, but it is 
 only when I go voluntary to the work, and only 
 so long as my own desire prompts me to it. 
 (Of Presumption.) 
 
 My library, which is of the best sort of 
 country libraries, is situated in a corner of my 
 house; if anything comes into my head that I 
 have a mind to look on or to write, lest I 
 should forget it in but going cross the court. 
 
4 xii ]!• 
 
 I am fain to commit it to the memory of some 
 other. If I venture in speaking to digress 
 never so little from my subject, I am infallibly 
 lost, which is the reason that I keep myself in 
 discourse strictly close. I am forced to call the 
 men that serve me either by the names of their 
 offices, or their country; for names are very 
 hard for me to remember. I can tell indeed 
 that there are three syllables, that it has a 
 harsh sound, and that it begins or ends with 
 such a letter, but that's all: and if I should 
 five long, I do not think but I should forget 
 my own name, as some others have done. 
 (Of Presumption.) 
 
 Montaigne was the apostle of nature, 
 the champion of common sense, radical but 
 conservative, a professed follower of the 
 middle path yet able to rise above con- 
 vention when it confined and restricted 
 instead of protecting him. His attitude to 
 ultimate truth was the scientific one. He 
 was open to conviction; disinclined to hold 
 anything incredible or impossible. Dowden 
 says that "a fact was of value to him as a 
 means of attaining a truth." What is more, 
 he could follow a train of reasoning from 
 circumstances by no means established as 
 facts if any useful conclusion could thereby 
 
4 xiii Ji- 
 be arrived at, availing himself alike of the 
 a priori and the a posteriori method. "Great 
 abuse in the world is begot, or, to speak 
 more boldly, all the abuses of the world are 
 begot by our being taught to be afraid of 
 professing our ignorance, and that we are 
 bound to accept all things we are not able 
 to refute." (Of Cripples.) 
 
 For the type of science and learning that 
 desiccates the soul and makes complacent, 
 conceited pedants he had no use but he 
 was in himself an admirable exponent of 
 the value of true culture. 
 
 His belief and unbelief^ were combined 
 very much as they are in many a physician 
 for whom a certain rationalism has been 
 grafted by the character of his studies on 
 a personahty incKned to faith, a faith 
 built up rather than shattered by intimate 
 acquaintance with much holy living and 
 dying. « 
 
 Like the physician, Montaigne lived ever 
 with death. Not that he frequently observed 
 
 * Celui qui a repandu et popularise en France le 
 scepticisme, c'est Montaigne. Cousin: Histoire 
 generale de la pbilosopbie. 
 
 ^ His religion at best is an anxious wish, — like that 
 of Rabelais, a great Perhaps. Carlyle. 
 
4 xiv Is- 
 
 the material phenomena of dissolution; but 
 this inevitable and stupendous contingency, 
 life's setting and background, was like the 
 ravine on one side of a mountain road, not 
 precluding enjoyment of the scenery but 
 reminding one of the need to put one's feet 
 down warily. But enough of these attempted 
 and perhaps superficial parallehsms and 
 analogies. 
 
 The purpose of this monograph is to 
 present together all the facts relating to 
 Montaigne's physical Kfe — his ancestry and 
 oflFspring, his appearance and make-up, his 
 marriage; to report some of the natural 
 phenomena that interested him; to recite 
 the story of his bodily afflictions and his 
 struggle for health; to set forth his attitude 
 to medicine and the grounds therefor. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 I. Heredity and Physical Char- 
 acteristics I 
 
 II. Personal Traits and Habits . 25 
 
 III. An Observer and Recorder of 
 Natural Phenomena 47 
 
 IV. Prejudice Against Physicians. 68 
 V. Montaigne's Views on His 
 
 Own Ailments 76 
 
 VI. Montaigne's Attitude To- 
 ward Medicine 92 
 
 VII. Montaigne AS A Patient . . . 103 
 VIII. Montaigne the Traveler . . 128 
 IX. Incidents of the Road. ... 154 
 X. Pastimes and Distractions. . 176 
 XI. Seeking Recovery in Ear- 
 nest 186 
 
 XII. Montaigne's Condition Grows 
 
 Worse 200 
 
 XIII. The Return to France ... 210 
 
 XIV. Clinical Record of the Jour- 
 ney 217 
 
 XV. Montaigne and Death. . . . 223 
 
 [XV] 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Facsimile of the title page of Mon- 
 taigne's "Essays" (Edition of 1588) 3 
 
 Portrait of Montaigne from an engrav- 
 ing by Augustin de Saint-Aubin 
 
 Facing 6 
 
 Chereau's portrait of Montaigne 
 
 Facing 1 
 
 The house at Sarlat where Etienne de 
 la Boetie was born 14 
 
 View of the Chateau Montaigne. The 
 facade towards the court-yard 
 
 Facing 20 
 
 Mademoiselle de Gournay, one of Mon- 
 taigne's ardent admirers who brought 
 out an edition of the "Essays" after 
 his death 22 
 
 Montaigne's house at Bordeaux Facing 32 
 
 Plan and view of Montaigne's Tower, 
 as it appeared in 1823 . . . Facing 40 
 
 Facsimile of Montaigne's annotations 
 in his copy of Caesar's "Commen- 
 taries" 42 
 
 [xvii] 
 
'^ ^ PAGE 
 
 Portrait of Luigi Cornaro by Titian, 
 
 Pitti Gallery, Florence . . . Facing 88 
 Small seal used by Montaigne in per- 
 sonal correspondence and in com- 
 munications to Henry IV 94 
 
 Large official seal 94 
 
 Account, in his own handwriting, of 
 Montaigne's arrest and incarceration 
 
 in the Bastille in 
 
 Stairway and fountains. Villa Lante, 
 
 Bagnaia Facing 134 
 
 The Caryatids, Villa Farnese, Capra- 
 
 rola Facing 136 
 
 Oneof the Cascades at Terni. . Facing 138 
 Bronzino's portrait of Bianca Capello in 
 
 the Pitti Gallery Facing 144 
 
 The Porta del Popolo or People's Gate, 
 Rome, through which, before the era 
 of raihoads, all travelers from the 
 north entered the city. Facing 166 
 The Inn of the Bear, Rome . . Facing 168 
 The circumcision of Christ as conceived 
 by Mantegna, Uffizi Gallery, Flor- 
 ence Facing 172 
 
 The Vatican Library ... . Facing 1 76 
 The Villa Medici, Rome. . Facing 180 
 
 Palace in the Villa Medici. . . Facing 181 
 Twin palaces and formal garden. Villa 
 Lante, Bagnaia Facing 182 
 
PAGE 
 
 The Shrine and interior of the Holy 
 House, Loreto Facing 184 
 
 The Camp Santo or burying ground, 
 Pisa Facing 204 
 
 The Triumph of Death by Orcagna. 
 Section of fresco decoration, Campo 
 Santo, Pisa Facing 208 
 
 The Fort du Ha, opposite Montaigne's 
 house in Bordeaux 211 
 
 Site of the original burial place of Mon- 
 taigne in the apse of the church of the 
 Feuillants, Bordeaux .... Facing 224 
 
 Tomb of Montaigne, transferred in 1871 
 from the Church of the Feuillants to 
 its present site in the basement of the 
 University, Bordeaux. . . . Facing 228 
 
 Signature of Marie de Gournay in a 
 letter to J. Lipsius 235 
 
 Autograph of Montaigne's wife affixed 
 to her marriage contract 236 
 
MONTAIGNE AND MEDICINE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Heredity and Physical Characteristics 
 
 I CHEL Ey quern de Mon- 
 taigne was born on Feb- 
 ruary 28, 1533, at the 
 Chateau Montaigne, 
 near the small town of 
 Bergerac^ and the impor- 
 tant city of Bordeaux, in 
 Perigord. He made his 
 appearance on the scene of life between 
 eleven o'clock and noon, so he tells us, and 
 thus was a departure from the rule since one's 
 debut in life's drama is commonly made at 
 about the hour of sunrise. His father was a 
 wealthy burgher, a wine merchant of good, 
 middle class French stock with, perhaps, an 
 admixture of British blood from the days of 
 
 1 Bergerac, a stronghold of Calvinism in the six- 
 teenth century. Now the center of a brisk trade in 
 truffles. 
 
 [i] 
 
4 2 }• 
 
 the Plantagenet ascendency in Aquitaine. 
 In earlier generations the family business 
 had been fish rather than wine. His mother 
 was Antoinette de Louppes, Lopes or Lopez, 
 of Toulouse. She was of Jewish extraction, 
 the family, originally of Villa Nova near 
 Toledo, having been expelled from Spain 
 (or Portugal). Her ancestors had been mer- 
 chants or physicians. She and her parents 
 adhered to the Huguenot persuasion. An- 
 toinette lived for seventy-three years after 
 the marriage contracted with Peter Mon- 
 taigne on his return from military service 
 in Italy under Francis i.^ The heart he 
 offered was whole, the body untainted by 
 any physical impurity. Montaigne was the 
 third child by this marriage but the eldest 
 of those who lived to grow up. 
 
 ^ The Italian expeditions of Charles viii, Louis 
 XII and Francis i were fruitful of political distur- 
 bance for the invaded territory but conferred no 
 direct benefits either political or military on France. 
 They did serve, however, to disseminate the ideas 
 due to the Renaissance and gave an impulse to 
 literature and art. Montaigne tells us that his 
 father, who had no learning, was thoroughly imbued 
 with admiration for the new culture. 
 
Facsimile of the title page of Montaigne's "Essays" (Edition 
 
 of 1588). 
 (.From "Montaigne, L' Homme el L'Oemre," by P. Bonnefon, Paris, 1893.) 
 
4 4 I* 
 
 Montaigne adored his father and honored 
 his memory to the last.^ He says of him: 
 
 His behavior was grave, humble and modest; 
 he was very solicitous of neatness and decency 
 both in his person and clothes, whether on 
 horseback, or afoot; he was exceeding punctual 
 of his word; and of a conscience and rehgion 
 generally tending rather towards superstition 
 than otherwise. For a man of httle stature, 
 very strong, well proportioned, and well knit, 
 of a pleasing countenance incHning to brown, 
 and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have 
 yet in the house to be seen canes powr'd full 
 of lead, with which, they say, he exercised his 
 arms for throwing the bar, or the stone; and 
 shoes with leaden soles to make him after 
 hghter for running, or leaping. Of his vaulting 
 he has left Httle miracles behind him: I have 
 seen him, when past three-score, laugh at our 
 exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown 
 into the saddle, make the tour of a table upon 
 his thumbs, and scarce ever mount the stairs 
 into his chamber without taking three or four 
 steps at a time: and swore he was a virgin at 
 
 ' "The best father that ever was," to quote 
 Montaigne. The grateful acknowledgment of all 
 he owes to his father, his reverence for him, remind 
 one of the opening paragraphs of the "Meditations" 
 of Marcus Aurelius. 
 
4 5 \ 
 
 his marriage; and yet it was after a long prac- 
 tice of arms beyond the mountains; of which war 
 he has left us a paper- journal under his own 
 hand, wherein he has given a precise account 
 from point to point of all passages both relat- 
 ing to the public and to himself. And was 
 also married at a well advanced maturity in 
 the year 1528, the three and thirtieth year of 
 his age, upon his way home from Italy. (Of 
 Drunkenness.) 
 
 He himself, though not lacking in health 
 and vigor, was no match for his father who 
 was good at every athletic exercise, knew no 
 illness and took no medicine until he became, 
 late in life, the victim of stone. " I hardly 
 ever find anyone who cannot outdo me, 
 save in running, in the which I used to 
 have a mediocre success — In dancing 
 and tennis, in wrestling, I have never been 
 able to acquire more than a very slight and 
 ordinary efficiency; in swimming, fencing, 
 vaulting, and jumping, none at all." (Of 
 Presumption.) 
 
 Montaigne's rearing was peculiar. Cor- 
 poral punishment was forbidden. Teaching 
 was by influence not compulsion. Everything 
 was to be simplicity, gentleness and kind- 
 ness. Anything that might jar or shock 
 
4 6 > 
 
 the nervous system was ruled out. He was 
 awakened by the sound of music, his father 
 "being of opinion, it did trouble and disturb 
 the brains of children suddenly to wake 
 them in the morning, and to snatch them 
 violently and over hastily from sleep, 
 (wherein they are much more profoundly 
 involved than we) he only caused me to 
 be wakened by the sound of some musical 
 instrument. . . . For, tho I was of a strong 
 and healthful constitution, and of a disposi- 
 tion tolerably sweet and tractable; yet 1 
 was withal so heavy, idle, and indisposed 
 that they could not rouse me from this 
 stupidity to any exercise of recreation, nor 
 get me out to play." (Education of Children.) 
 He was brought up among peasants with a 
 view to encouraging hardihood and fostering 
 physical adaptability and was committed to 
 teachers and companions who spoke Latin 
 so that this might be his first, his natural 
 language. One of his earliest tutors was a 
 doctor of German descent "who since died 
 a famous physician in France." 
 
 As a lad he was not overzealous in study. 
 He says that he was rather lethargic, not 
 so much in danger of doing wrong as of 
 doing nothing. He was a dreamer out of 
 
Portrait of Montaigne from an engraving by Augustin de 
 
 Saint-Aubin. 
 {From "Monlaigne, L'Homme el L'Oeuvre," by P. Bonnefon, Paris, 1S93.) 
 
•i 7 > 
 
 touch with the practical issues of life, a 
 disposition favored rather than corrected by 
 a peculiar bringing up which with all its 
 effort to be sedative and not stimulating did 
 not prevent him from developing into a man 
 of nerves; of a sensitive, susceptible temper- 
 ament. He analyzed this condition when he 
 said: 
 
 The very sight of another's pain does materi- 
 ally work upon me, and I naturally usurp the 
 sense of a third person to share with him in his 
 torment. A perpetual cough in another tickles 
 my lungs and throat. I more unwillingly visit 
 the sick I love, and am by duty interested to 
 look after, than those I care not for, and from 
 whom I have no expectation. I take possession 
 of the disease I am concerned at and lay it too 
 much to heart, and do not at all wonder that 
 fancy should distribute fevers, and sometimes 
 kill such as allow too much scope, and are too 
 willing to entertain it. Simon Thomas was a 
 great physician of his time. I remember, that 
 happening one day at Toulouse* to meet him 
 
 * Toulouse, founded before the Christian era, 
 became the center of Visigothic power in the fifth 
 century. For five hundred years it was governed 
 by the Counts of that name. Here was established 
 the tribunal of the Inquisition. From 1562 to 1572 
 it was the scene of vigorous persecution of the 
 
4 8 > 
 
 at a rich old fellow's house, who was troubled 
 with naughty lungs, and discoursing with his 
 patient about the method of his cure; he told 
 him, that one thing which would be very con- 
 ducing to it, was to give me such occasion to be 
 pleased with his company, that I might come 
 often to see him, by which means and by fixing 
 his eyes upon the freshness of my complexion, 
 and his imagination upon the sprightliness 
 and vigour that glowed in my youth, and 
 possessing all his senses with the flourishing 
 age wherein I then was, his habit of body might 
 peradventure be amended, but he forgot to say 
 
 Huguenots. The beautiful cathedral has in one of 
 the choir stalls a carving of a man with a pig's head 
 supposed to be a caricature of Calvin. A school of 
 medicine was incorporated with the University in 
 the thirteenth century. It was here that Raymond 
 de Sebonde taught medicine and theology at the 
 beginning of the fifteenth century. He wrote in a 
 jargon of Latin and Spanish on "Natural Theology." 
 At his father's request Montaigne translated this 
 work and then felt inspired to write his famous 
 defence or "Apology" for the writer's views. For 
 one man to teach both medicine and theology was 
 not very uncommon in the olden time. Coryat 
 mentions G. Gratarola of Bergamo " by profession 
 a physician and an excellent man in that faculty 
 who apphed himself to divinity," became a Prot- 
 estant and removed to the University of Bale where 
 he spent the greater part of his Hfe after his 
 conversion. 
 
4 9 I*" 
 
 that mine at the same time might be made 
 worse. (Force of the Imagination.) 
 
 He required periods of privacy and leisure 
 for accomplishment as well as for comfort. 
 "For my own part, I confess, I cannot 
 forbear starting when the rattle of a harque- 
 buse thunders in my ears on a sudden, and 
 in a place where I am not to expect it, 
 which I have also observed in others, 
 braver fellows than I." (Of Constancy.) He 
 was never good at games or manly exercises 
 except those of running and riding. His 
 passion for horses is amply proved by many 
 sympathetic references to them and though 
 he professed no great skill as a horseman 
 he rode much, both when sick and well. In 
 his travels he noted everything that he ran 
 upon connected with equitation. 
 
 I do not willingly alight when I am once on 
 horseback; for it is the place where, whether 
 well, or sick, I find myself most at ease. (Of 
 Horses Dressed to the Menage, etc.) 
 
 I had taken a horse that went very easy upon 
 his pace, but was not very strong. Being upon 
 my return home, a sudden occasion falling out 
 to make use of this horse in a kind of service 
 that he was not acquainted with; one of my 
 train, a lusty proper fellow, mounted upon a 
 
4 10 > 
 
 strong German horse, that had a very ill mouth, 
 but was otherwise vigorous and unsoiled, to 
 play the Bravo, and appear a better man than 
 his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the 
 very track where I was, rushing Hke a Colossus 
 upon the httle man, and the Kttle horse, with 
 such a career of strength and weight, that he 
 turned us both over and over topsy turvy, with 
 our heels in the air! So that there lay the horse 
 overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I 
 ten or twelve paces from him stretched out at 
 length, with my face all battered and broken, 
 my sword which I had in my hand, above ten 
 paces beyond that, and my belt broke all 
 to pieces, without motion or sense any more 
 than a stock. 'Twas the only swoon I was 
 ever in till this hour in my life. (Use makes 
 Perfectness.) 
 
 A good rider does not so much mend my seat, 
 as an awkward attorney, or a Venetian on 
 horseback^; and a clownish way of speaking 
 does more reform mine, than the quaintest 
 dialect. The ridiculous and simple look of 
 
 'The Venetians seldom or never come on horse- 
 back and vulgar jests are raised on them for ignor- 
 ance of riding, as of one who would hire one horse 
 to carry as many as came with him in his boat and 
 of another who, ready to take horse, asked how the 
 wind stood, as thinking he could no more ride than 
 sail against the wind. Fynes Moryson: Itinerary. 
 
Chereau*s portrait of Montaigne. 
 (From " Montaigne, U Homme et L'Oeuvre," by P. Bonnefon, Paris, 1893.) 
 
4 II > 
 
 another, does always advertise and advise 
 me; that which pricks rouses and incites much 
 better than that which tickles. (Of the Act 
 of Conferring.) 
 
 I had rather be a good horseman than a good 
 logician. ... I can keep on horseback, as much 
 tormented with the stone as I am, without 
 alighting or being weary, eight or ten hours 
 together. . . . My horses perform the better, for 
 never any horse tired under me, that was able 
 to hold out the first day's journey: I water 
 them at evry brook I meet, and have only a 
 care they have so much way to go before I 
 come to my inn, as will warm the water in 
 their bellies. ... I feel death always twitching me 
 by the throat, or by the back: but I am of 
 another temper, 'tis in all places alike to me; 
 yet, might I have my choice, I think I should 
 rather choose to die on horseback than in a bed, 
 out of my own house, and far enough from my 
 own people. ... I should choose to pass away the 
 greatest part of my hfe on horseback. (Of 
 Vanity.) 
 
 As horses that are led make several bounds 
 and curvetts, but 'tis always at the length of 
 the collar, and they still follow him that leads 
 them. . . . Horses for the most part neighing, and 
 swans singing when they die. (Of Physiognomy.) 
 
 It was always his habit, whether he 
 purposed to halt on the road or not, to let 
 
4 12 l" 
 
 his''horses have oats to eat in the morning 
 at the inn before starting. "After faring 
 seven leagues, we all arrived fasting late 
 at night at Stertzing." He thought the 
 Swiss gave their horses too much to eat. On 
 leaving Parma "we changed horses at every 
 post and for 2 posts I made them go at full 
 gallop so as to test the strength of my 
 loins. I felt no ill effects or weariness there- 
 from." At Lyons he bought "three strong 
 service horses, with fresh cut tails, for two 
 hundred crowns, having purchased on the 
 previous day of Malesieu a pacing horse 
 for fifty crowns and another curtal nag for 
 thirty-three." He thought it folly to bring 
 good horses to Tuscany as the quality of 
 hay was poor. The inhabitants unbridled 
 and unsaddled their horses and let them 
 drink all the water they wanted to when on 
 the road! 
 
 As a young man he was fond of rich dress, 
 ambitious, perhaps dissipated. The ambi- 
 tion* never utterly died out though its nature 
 
 * Montaigne in his youth coveted the distinction 
 of being admitted to the order of St. Michael, and 
 while serving as a counsellor at Bordeaux his frequent 
 journeys to Paris on semi-official business brought 
 him into contact with the court and his personal 
 charm won him the favorable notice of Henry in who 
 
4 13 t 
 
 and end changed with his growth. That he 
 was dissipated is a possible deduction from 
 some of those many frank statements which 
 have to be taken with a grain of salt. "I 
 have formerly loved cards and dice, but 
 have long since left them off, only for this 
 reason, that though I carry my losses as 
 handsomely as another, I was not well 
 satisfied and quiet within." In the same 
 way it may be concluded that he overtaxed 
 and abused his health in youth. Probably 
 in the reaction from the emotions aroused 
 by La Boetie's death — Montaigne was a 
 passionate votary of friendship, and life 
 gave him one and only one friend that 
 
 made him a gentleman of the bedchamber. It was 
 either this monarch or his brother Charles ix who 
 presented him with the collar of the order in ques- 
 tion. Later in life Montaigne conceived the idea 
 of being made a citizen of Rome and while sojourn- 
 ing there in 1581 he "set all his wits to work to this 
 end." He had "some difficulty in the matter but 
 succeeded at last" and was presented with the 
 freedom of the city by a papal bull embellished 
 with gold letters and seals, a testimonial which 
 occasioned him an almost childish satisfaction. 
 
 Montaigne was invested with knighthood by 
 Gaston de Foix by order of the king, 1571. He 
 was made Gentleman of the Bedchamber by Henry 
 
 IV. 
 
The house at Sarlat where fitienne de la Bofetie was born.' 
 
 (From "Through the French Provinces" by Ernest C. Feixotto, New York, 
 
 1909.) 
 
4 15 t 
 
 satisfied every craving and developed every 
 faculty — he deliberately sought distraction 
 in the frivolities of his time though such 
 pursuits were essentially foreign to his 
 nature. 
 
 I have never put myself to great pains to 
 curb the desires by the which I have found 
 myself beset. My virtue is a virtue, or rather 
 an innocence, which is purely random and 
 accidental. By lucky chance I come of a race 
 famous for its honour, and of an excellent 
 father. I know not whether some part of his 
 
 ^ The friendship of Montaigne and La Boetie was 
 one of the great classic friendships of all time, hke 
 that of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, 
 David and Jonathan. Montaigne never recovered 
 from the sorrow occasioned by La Boetie's death. 
 It left a permanent void in his life but the bene- 
 ficial eifect of the association was also lasting. It 
 spiritualized Montaigne and purified his mental 
 vision 
 
 Etienne de la Boetie was born at Sarlat in a man- 
 sion which dated from the time of Francis i and is 
 still standing. "Sarlat is a fine old place with 
 somber, twisting streets hned with splendid stone 
 houses, whose tall turrets and high-pitched slate 
 roofs and whose gothic portals leading to spiral 
 stairways evoke the heyday of its prosperity — the 
 time of Louis xii and his immediate successors — 
 perfect object lessons of the domestic architecture of 
 the middle ages." Ernest Peixotto: Through the 
 French Provinces. 
 
4 i6 l»- 
 
 tastes have passed into me; or whether home 
 example, and the good teaching I had in 
 childhood, have helped me without my being 
 aware; or else whether I was born thus, but, 
 anyhow, I hold most vices in abhorrence. 
 (Of Cruelty.) 
 
 MARRIAGE 
 
 Two years after La Beetle's death Mon- 
 taigne, at the age of thirty-three, married 
 Franfoise de la Chassaigne, a woman 
 of good, middle class family and respectable 
 fortune. Frangoise made him a good wife, 
 the union fully meeting the husband's 
 requirements. We have no way of know- 
 ing how satisfactory it was to his wife. 
 Presumably it had all the disappoint- 
 ments usually accruing to the helpmate 
 of a student and scholar. Montaigne was 
 reasonably faithful. Frangoise apparently 
 discharged her full duty as wife and mother, 
 proving the capable business partner which 
 the Frenchman requires and demonstrat- 
 ing more than the usual capacity for admin- 
 istration since the essayist was without 
 knowledge or capacity for farming, busi- 
 ness, or the direction of an estate. 
 Fran^oise, in addition, played the Good 
 
4 17 > 
 Samaritan and Lady Bountiful for the 
 rural neighborhood of the chateau and 
 doubtless got some pleasure out of life in 
 this role and by doctoring the sick, using 
 the same medicine — one which she did not 
 take herself — for fifty different maladies 
 and always obtaining wonderful results. 
 Montaigne had the typical Gallic idea of 
 marriage as an institution and perhaps 
 something more: 
 
 For if one doth not always fulfill one's duty, 
 at least one must always love it; and one must 
 recognize the treachery of marrying without 
 espousing one another. . . . Marriage hath for 
 its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and con- 
 stancy — a flat pleasure but a universal one. 
 Love is founded upon delight alone, and giveth 
 it, truly, of a kind more poignant, more cares- 
 sive, more vital. (On Some Verses of Virgil.) 
 
 A man doth not marry for himself, whatever 
 people say; he marrieth, quite as much, if not 
 more, for his posterity and his family. The 
 uses and interests of marriage concern our 
 race, they reach far beyond ourselves. (Of 
 Vanity.) 
 
 Marriage meaneth a kind of converse which 
 easily cooleth through propinquity— a converse 
 which is harmed by assiduity. Every strange 
 woman seemeth unto us a comely woman; and 
 
4 1 8 > 
 
 every man knoweth by experience that the 
 continual sight of one another cannot give the 
 pleasure which cometh of taking and leaving 
 by fits and starts. As for me, these interrup- 
 tions fill me with a fresh love towards my family, 
 and restore me in pleasanter fashion to the 
 groove of my home. And I know that kindliness 
 hath arms long enough to stretch and join 
 across from one corner of the world to another 
 — more especially this married sort of kindhness, 
 in the which there existeth a constant inter- 
 communication of services which awaken obhga- 
 tion and remembrance. (Of Vanity.) 
 
 The fact that happy marriage is so rare is a 
 sign of its value. When we fashion it finely 
 and take it the right way, there is no nobler 
 institution in society. (On Some Verses of 
 Virgil.) 
 
 He was far from being a Lothario and yet 
 by no means a truly domestic character. 
 "And truly I was then drawn unto it more 
 ill prepared and less tractable than I am at 
 present after having made trial of it; and as 
 libertine as I am taken to be, I have in 
 truth more strictly observed the laws of 
 wedlock than I either promised or hoped." 
 He considered mutual respect and identity 
 of interests the foundation of proper conju- 
 gal relations, but there is genuine tenderness 
 
4 19 t 
 
 and appreciation of her many good qualities 
 in the letter of condolence addressed to his 
 wife in relation to the loss of their first 
 child. Montaigne's marriage and his atti- 
 tude to love and women have been much 
 discussed. He was not above nor beneath 
 observing the conventions, proprieties and 
 externals of a gentleman's position in the 
 social arrangement. For the marriage a la 
 mode in Hogarth's sense he had no use. The 
 marriage after the good old French fashion 
 he respected. It agreed with him. The union 
 was marked by little romantic passion but 
 by much respect and consideration on both 
 sides. Six children were born to the couple, 
 all girls, only one of whom attained ado- 
 lescence.* Montaigne's paternal affection 
 centered principally around the creations 
 of his brain. If not a model of virtue, he 
 certainly was above the bulk of his con- 
 temporaries in the matter of morals; but not 
 so much through any ardent belief in the 
 obligation to be pure as from a certain 
 natural fastidiousness, clean instincts and 
 
 * Leonora. She was twice married. It was 
 through the children by her second husband that 
 Montaigne's descendants became allied to the 
 de Segur family. 
 
4 20 > 
 
 a distaste for vice. In support of this it 
 would not be amiss to quote Bacon: "For 
 cleanness of body was ever esteemed to 
 proceed from a due reverence to God, to 
 society, and to ourselves." 
 
 Montaigne maintained with great earnest- 
 ness throughout his writings that it was 
 untenable to think of soul and body as 
 separate and independent entities and he 
 indignantly denies that woman's love is 
 the wholly spiritual thing that some pretend. 
 His writings have some pointed allusions 
 to the peculiarities of the fair, both maids 
 and wives, but he may be regarded as an 
 early recognizer, if not an apostle, of the 
 doctrine of the equality of the sexes, holding 
 that "apart from education and custom the 
 difference is not great."® He is constantly 
 harping upon the indivisibility, the inter- 
 dependence of the body and the soul. 
 
 Those do wrong who wish to disjoin our two 
 great halves, and isolate them one from the 
 other. They should, on the contrary, be joined 
 and reunited. The soul must be commanded 
 
 ' Their wives have sense like them : they see, and 
 smell, 
 
 And have their palates both for sweet and sour, 
 As husbands have. Shakespeare: Othello. 
 
i 21 ]s- 
 
 not to draw aside, to keep itself apart, to de- 
 spise and desert the body — indeed, it cannot 
 possibly do so excepting through some ill- 
 shaped, apish trick. Rather should the soul 
 strike fresh alhance with the body, embrace it, 
 cherish it, control and counsel it, reestablish it 
 and bring it back when it swerveth. In short, 
 the soul should marry the body and serve it 
 as a husband, to the end that their property 
 should not appear to be different and contrary, 
 but one and the same. (Of Presumption.) 
 
 That opinion which disdaineth our natural 
 life is ridiculous, for, after all, our life is our 
 being, our all. It is against Nature that we 
 should despise ourselves and set ourselves not 
 to care about ourselves. This is a peculiar 
 malady. No other creature is known to hate 
 and despise itself; and it is for a like vanity that 
 we desire to be different from what we are. 
 (The Custom of the Isle of Cea.) 
 
 'Tis not the soul, 'tis not a body that we are 
 training up, but a man, and we ought not to 
 divide him. (Education of Children.) 
 
 For my part I must ingeniously declare, 
 that the puff of every accident not only carries 
 me along with it, according to its own pro- 
 clivity, but that moreover I discompose, and 
 trouble myself, by the instability of my own 
 posture; and whoever will look narrowly into 
 his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice 
 
Mademoiselle de Gournay, one of Montaigne's ardent 
 admirers whom he called his "adopted daughter." She 
 acted as one of the editors of an edition of his "Essays" 
 
 published after his death. 
 
 (From the painting by Matheus, a copy of which appears in "Montaigne, 
 
 L'Homme et VOeamre," by P. Bonnefon, Paris, 1893.) 
 
4 23 > 
 
 in the same condition. I give my soul sometimes 
 one face, and sometimes another, according to 
 the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of 
 myself, it is, because I consider myself variously. 
 All contrarieties are there to be found, in one 
 corner or another, or after one manner or 
 another. Bashful, insolent, chaste, lustful, prat- 
 ing, silent, laborious, delicate, ingenious, heavy, 
 melancholic, pleasant, lying, true, knowing, 
 ignorant, liberal, covetous, and prodigal, I 
 find all this in myself more or less according 
 as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift 
 himself to the bottom, will find in himself, even 
 by his own judgment this volubifity and dis- 
 cordance. In a word, I have nothing to say 
 of myself entirely, simply, and solidly without 
 mixture, and confusion. (Of the Inconstancy 
 of Our Actions.) 
 
 To what end do we dismember by divorce, 
 a building united by so mutual and brotherly 
 a correspondence? Let us, on the contrary, 
 repair and corroborate it by mutual offices, 
 let the mind rouse and quicken the heaviness 
 of the body, and the body stop and fix the 
 levity of the soul. (Of Experience.) 
 
 The asceticism of the Middle Ages and 
 of the early Church was abhorrent to him. 
 He was too steeped in Latin and Greek 
 lore, too much infected with the revival of 
 
4 24 > 
 
 respect for the human body that came 
 with the Renaissance to tolerate the vili- 
 fication of the body which passed for evi- 
 dences of saintliness in anchorite and 
 pilgrim. 
 
 'Tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, 
 remembers, comprehends, judges, desires, and 
 exercises all its other operations by divers in- 
 struments of the body, as the pilot guides his 
 ship according to his experience, one while 
 straining or slacking the cordage, one while 
 hoisting the main-yard, or removing the rudder, 
 by one and the same strength carrying on so 
 many several effects: and that it is lodged in 
 the brain, which appears in that the wounds 
 and accidents that touch that part, do imme- 
 diately offend the faculties of the soul. (The 
 Apology.) 
 
 His study of humanity and his reverence 
 for nature convinced him of the oneness of 
 man. His admiring disciple. Mile. deGour- 
 nay, had caught the spirit of her master when 
 she wrote this aphorism. "To the common 
 herd the soul is only useful as salt is useful 
 to a hog — to keep it from corruption." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Personal Traits and Habits 
 
 A strange and unusual characteristic of 
 Montaigne's youth was the very frequent 
 thought of death and this, the natural 
 accompaniment of middle age, became an 
 ever-deepening shadow with the advent of 
 sickness and invalidism. He did not fight 
 against this inclination to ponder on dis- 
 solution as a morbid and perhaps dangerous 
 one and when suffering and disease made 
 death an ever-lurking presence at his elbow 
 he entertained it and looked it squarely in 
 the face. 
 
 There is nothing which I have more con- 
 stantly entertained myself withal than imagi- 
 nations of death, even in the most wanton 
 season of my age. (That Men Are not to Judge of 
 Our Happiness till after Death.) In the company 
 of ladies, and in the height of mirth, some have 
 perhaps thought me possessed with some jeal- 
 ousy, or meditating upon the uncertainty of 
 some imagined hope, while I was entertaining 
 myself with the remembrance of someone sur- 
 prised a few days before with a burning fever 
 
4 26 > 
 
 of which he died returning from an entertain- 
 ment hke this with his head full of idle fancies 
 of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that 
 for ought I knew the same destiny was attending 
 me. (Study of Philosophy is to Learn to Die.) 
 
 Later we shall quote him more extensively 
 in this connection for it is here that his 
 philosophy reaches its fastigium of grandeur 
 and beauty. 
 
 There is a tinge of real regret in his 
 comments on his height for he was below 
 the average. Montaigne deemed dignity 
 of stature an essential of manly beauty. 
 
 My height is rather below the average. 
 This defect hath not only the drawback of 
 ugliness, but, in addition, that of inconvenience. 
 A beautiful figure, in truth, is the only beauty 
 allowed to men. For the rest, my figure is 
 strong and well set, my face not fat but full, 
 my complexion — between the jovial and the 
 melancholy — showeth moderately sanguine and 
 of tempered heat. For my health, it is steady 
 and gay. . . Now I am of something lower 
 than the middle stature, a defect that not only 
 borders upon deformity, but carries withal a 
 great deal of inconvenience along with it, espe- 
 cially those who are in command; for the author- 
 ity which a graceful presence, and a majestic 
 
4 27 > 
 
 mien beget, is wanting . . . The other beauties 
 belong to women, the beauty of stature is the 
 only beauty of men. Where there is a con- 
 temptible stature, neither the largeness and 
 roundness of the forehead nor the whiteness and 
 sweetness of the eyes, nor the moderate propor- 
 tion of the nose, nor the Httleness of the ears 
 and mouth, nor the evenness and whiteness of 
 the teeth, nor the thickness of a well-set brown 
 beard, shining like the husk of a chestnut, nor 
 curled hair, nor the just proportion of the head, 
 nor a fresh complexion, nor a pleasing air of a 
 face, nor a body without any offensive scent, 
 nor the just proportion of limbs, can make a 
 handsome man. I am, as to the rest, strong, 
 and well knit, my face is not puffed, but 
 full, and my complexion betwixt jovial and 
 melanchoHc, moderately sanguine and hot. 
 (Of Presumption.) 
 
 His garments were usually either white 
 or black and in walking or riding he carried 
 a cane. He set forth on his journeying with 
 a coat of no fashion trimmed with rough 
 hair, and provided with two caps. His nether 
 garments he did not vary with the season. 
 Of his personal habits and tastes he writes 
 freely and fully. He was absent-minded and 
 forgetful, indeed his memory was the poor- 
 
4 28 ]* 
 
 est imaginable. He slept nine hours a day, 
 but had no siesta. Two meals sufficed him 
 and he preferred them simple. He had a keen 
 relish for fish, a real weakness for crawfish 
 on which he fed every day for the first two 
 hundred leagues of his foreign travels; but 
 none were set before him at Rovere and that 
 circumstance, or the equanimity with which 
 Montaigne endured the omission, astonished 
 his scribe. 
 
 Long sittings at meat both trouble me, and 
 do me harm; for, be it for want of better counte- 
 nance, or that I have accustomed myself to it 
 from a child, I eat all the while I sit. Therefore 
 it is, that at my own house, though the meals 
 there are of the shortest, I usually sit down a 
 little while after the rest. . . . They whose 
 concern it is to have a care of me, may very 
 easily hinder me from eating anything they 
 think will do me harm; for in such things I 
 never covet nor miss anything I do not see: 
 but withal, if it once comes in my sight, 'tis 
 in vain to persuade me to forbear, so that when 
 I design to fast, I must be parted from those that 
 eat suppers, and must have only so much given 
 me, as is required for a regular collation; for 
 if I sit down to table, I forget my resolution. 
 When I order my cook to alter the manner of 
 
4 29 t 
 
 dressing any dish of meat, all my family know 
 what it means, that my stomach is out of order, 
 and that I shall scarce touch it; I love to have 
 all meats that will endure it very Httle boiled 
 or roasted, and love them mightily mortified, 
 and even to stinking in many. Nothing but 
 hardness generally offends me; of any other 
 quahty I am as patient and indifferent as any 
 man I have known; so that contrary to the 
 common humor, even in fish, it often happens, 
 that I find them both too fresh and too firm: 
 not for want of teeth, which I ever had good, 
 even to excellence, and that age does but now 
 begin to threaten at this time of my fife. I 
 have ever been used every morning to rub 
 them with a napkin, and before and after dinner. 
 God is favorable to those whom he makes to die 
 by degrees;^ 'tis the only benefit of old age; 
 the last death will be so much the less painful; 
 it will kill but a quarter of a man; or but half 
 a one at most. I have one tooth lately fallen 
 out without drawing, and without pain; it 
 was the natural term of its duration. . 
 Eating too much hurts me, but for the quality 
 of what I eat, I do not yet certainly know that 
 any sort of meat disagrees with my stomach; 
 
 ^ First our pleasures die — and then 
 Our hopes, and then our fears — and when 
 These are dead, the debt is due, 
 Dust claims dust — and we die too. Shelley. 
 
4 30 t 
 
 neither have I observed that either fuII-moon 
 or decrease, spring or autumn, are hurtful to 
 me. We have in us motions that are inconstant, 
 and for which no reason can be given. For 
 example, I found radishes first grateful to my 
 stomach, since that nauseous, and now at 
 present grateful again. In several other things 
 likewise, I find my stomach and appetite to vary 
 after the same manner. I have changed and 
 changed again from white to claret, from claret 
 to white. I am a great lover of fish, and con- 
 sequently make my fasts feasts, and my feasts 
 fasts; and believe what some people say, that it 
 is more easy of digestion than flesh. . . I 
 never keep my legs and thighs warmer in winter 
 than in summer, one single pair of silk stockings 
 is all : I have suffered myself for the relief of my 
 rheumatism to keep my head warmer, and my 
 belly upon the account of my colic : my diseases 
 in a few days habituated themselves, and dis- 
 dained my ordinary provisions. I was pres- 
 ently got from a single cap to a napkin, and from 
 a napkin to a quilted cap. The belly-pieces of 
 my doublet serve only for decency, they signify 
 nothing, if I do not add a hare's skin or a 
 stomacher, and wear a gallot upon my head. . . 
 I am not very apt to be thirsty, either well or 
 sick, my mouth is indeed apt to be dry, but 
 without thirst; and commonly I never drink 
 but with thirst that is created by eating, and 
 
i 31 > 
 
 then I drink as hard as any. I drink pretty well 
 for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a 
 hungry meal, I do not only exceed the limits 
 of Augustus, that drank but thrice precisely; 
 but not to offend Democrates his rule, who for- 
 bade that men should stop at four times, as an 
 unlucky number; I proceed for need to the 
 fifth glass, about three half pints. For the little 
 glasses are my favorites ; and I take a dehght to 
 drink them off, which other people avoid as an 
 indecent thing. I mix my wine sometimes with 
 half, sometimes the third part water; and when 
 I am at home, by an ancient custom that my 
 father's physician prescribed both to him and 
 himself, they mix that which is designed for me 
 in the buttery three or four hours before 'tis 
 brought in . . .1 fear a fog, and fly from smoke, 
 as from the plague. . . and amongst the 
 difficulties of war, reckon the choking dust they 
 make us ride in a whole day together. I have 
 a free and easy respiration, and my colds for 
 the most part go off without offense to the lungs, 
 and without a cough. The heat of summer is 
 more an enemy to me than the cold of winter. 
 (Of Experience.) 
 
 Melon was his preferred fruit. He wanted 
 his bread unsalted but was fond of salt 
 meats and likewise of sauces. A variety of 
 dishes he abominated. He ate with his 
 
4 32 > 
 
 fingers,^ in a nervous haste that often 
 made him bite fingers, tongue and lips. 
 This was not gluttony. With his usual 
 calm indifference to the effect of his revela- 
 tions upon the reader he tells us in this 
 connection that there were men in Rome 
 who taught graceful mastication just as 
 graceful carriage in walking is taught. This 
 is to admit that he presented a sorry picture 
 at table and that he did not greatly care. 
 Eating rather bored him save in pleasant 
 company. The numerous allusions to food 
 are made by a man who makes no pretense, 
 has nothing to hide, recks not of critics 
 and who from the time he began to write 
 had increasingly to consider what he ate on 
 account of his health. A tester and bed 
 curtains were essential to his comfort and 
 he heartily approved of German stoves and 
 of a warm bedroom, being in mortal dread 
 of chilling by the night air or that of the 
 early morning. 
 
 A German made me very merry at Augusta 
 ("Augsburg") with disputing the inconvenience 
 of our hearths by the same arguments which we 
 commonly make use of in decrying their stoves : 
 
 ^ They say fingers were made before forks and 
 hands before knives. Swift. 
 
Mont.iigne's house at Bordenax. 
 
i 33 ¥ 
 for, to say the truth, that smothered heat, and 
 then the scent of that heated matter of which 
 the fire is composed, very much offend such as 
 are not used to them, not me; but as to the rest, 
 the heat being always equal, constant and 
 universal, without flame, without smoke, and 
 without the wind that comes down our chim- 
 neys, they may many ways endure comparison 
 with ours. Why do we not imitate the Roman 
 architecture? For, they say, that anciently fires 
 were not made in their houses, but on the out- 
 side, and at the foot of them, from whence the 
 heat was conveyed to the whole fabric by pipes 
 contrived in the wall, which were drawn twining 
 about the rooms that were to be warmed: 
 which I have seen plainly described somewhere 
 in Seneca. (Of Experience.) 
 
 But he required no warming pan and 
 preferred a hard bed. He was no Sybarite. 
 
 No season is enemy to me, but the parching 
 heat of a scorching sun; for the umbrellas made 
 use of in Italy, ever since the time of the 
 ancient Romans, more burden a man's arm 
 than they relieve his head^. . . I love rain, 
 
 'Thomas Coryat in "Crudities" writes illumi- 
 natingly on this subject: "Also many of them do 
 carry other fine things of a far greater price, that 
 will cost at the least a duckat, which they commonly 
 call in the Italian tongue umbrellas, that is, things 
 
 3 
 
4 34 > 
 
 and to dabble in the dirt, as well as tame ducks 
 do; the change of air and climate never concern 
 me: every sky is alike. I am only troubled with 
 inward alterations, which I breed within 
 myself, and those are not so frequent in travel. 
 ... I have learned to travel after the Spanish 
 fashion, and to make but one stage of a great 
 many miles; and in excessive heats, I always 
 travel by night, from sunset to sunrising. 
 The other method of baiting by the way, in 
 haste and hurry to gobble up a dinner, is 
 
 that minister shadow unto them for shelter against 
 the scorching heat of the sun. These are made of 
 leather something answerable to the form of a little 
 canopy, and hooped in the inside with divers httle 
 wooden hoops that extend the umbrella in a pretty 
 large compass. They are used especially by horsemen, 
 who carry them in their hands when they ride, 
 fastening the end of the handle upon one of their 
 thighs, and they impart so long a shadow unto 
 them, that it keeps the heat of the sun from the 
 upper parts of their bodies." 
 
 It was on the way to Cremona that Coryat first 
 noticed the general use of fans which he considers a 
 frivolous subject but adverts to nevertheless. 
 "These fannes both men and women of the country 
 doe carry to coole themselves withall in the time 
 of heate by the often fanning of their faces. Most 
 of them are very elegant and pretty things." He 
 records that they were beautifully painted, decorated 
 with verses or emblems and with views of some noted 
 Itahan city and a brief description of them. 
 
i 35 > 
 
 especially in short days, very inconvenient. 
 
 (Of Vanity.) 
 
 Prior to the advent of his lithemia we 
 may conceive him to have possessed a 
 rugged constitution, full of nervous energy. 
 Slenderly built but energetic, of that resistant 
 type familiarly designated "tough as whit- 
 leather," sickness never weakened his will 
 and but little hampered him in the execu- 
 tion of it. The same nicety of taste which 
 made him lead a clean life, utterly inde- 
 pendent of conscientious or religious scru- 
 ples, made him careful of his person. He 
 had a real physical modesty but was not 
 foolish, and heaps ridicule on Cyrus and 
 Maximilian for their extreme unwilling- 
 ness to uncover the person. If he ate with 
 his fingers he made full use of a napkin, 
 delighted to have one after each course. He 
 could not be comfortable unless he washed 
 on rising. He cleaned his teeth twice a day 
 with a napkin. He appears to have been 
 hypermetropic. "My sight, is perfect, entire, 
 and discovers at a very great distance, but 
 is soon weary, which makes me that I can- 
 not read long, but am forced to have one to 
 read to me." (Of Presumption.) "I am to 
 this hour ignorant of the use of spectacles, 
 
4 36 > 
 
 and can see as far as ever I did, or any other. 
 'Tis true, that in the evening I begin to 
 find a little trouble and weakness in my 
 sight, if I read; an exercise that I have 
 always found troublesome, especially by 
 night." (Of Experience.) 
 
 Occasionally Montaigne fasted not as an 
 act of religious observance but for the 
 physical benefit he experienced from it. 
 "Repletion hath in my case a cruelly 
 sluggish eff'ect on activity." He liked to 
 rest after meals and to listen to, but not 
 engage in, talk. Before meals he found it 
 wholesome and pleasant to wax even voci- 
 ferous. He stood straight and held his head 
 high; his step was firm, his gestures lively. 
 His voice was of pleasing timbre. Compared 
 to his father he confesses himself awkward. 
 Thus in doffing his hat to a passing acquaint- 
 ance in Rome he struck himself in the eye 
 and was incommoded by the accident for 
 several days.^ The recital of this incident is 
 
 * I felt somewhat unwell [at Sinfgaglia], for on the 
 day I left Rome, when M. d'Ossat was walking with 
 me, I saluted a gentleman we met and I did this in 
 so maladroit a fashion that I injured the corner of 
 my right eye with my right thumb, so much that it 
 bled and remained much inflamed for a long time. 
 Montaigne. 
 
4 37 > 
 typical of Montaigne. It has been said that 
 "Tom Jones" is the only faithful portrait 
 of a man to be found in fiction. In his 
 description of himself Montaigne gives us a 
 picture of a real character drawn with 
 pitiless lack of reserve. In conversation he 
 was voluble, imperious. 
 
 He was fond of hunting^ though soft- 
 hearted as regards the game. 
 
 I carry my feeling to such a degree of softness 
 that I cannot see the neck of a fowl wrung with- 
 out displeasure, and cannot bear to hear the 
 wail of a hare caught by my hounds, although 
 riding to the chase is one of my excessive 
 pleasures. (Of Cruelty.) 
 
 He played with his cat and must have 
 been rather fond of animals. He says of 
 them. 
 
 ^ The King of Navarre visited Montaigne at his 
 chateau in 1584 accompanied by some forty noble- 
 men of his suite and by serving men and guards. 
 Some of the royal party had to be lodged in neigh- 
 boring villages. Montaigne states with pride that 
 he was able to make the king perfectly comfortable 
 and "he slept in my bed." The king was waited on 
 at the table entirely by Montaigne's own people. 
 Montaigne gave the king a deer hunt in his forest 
 which occupied him for two days. 
 
4 38 t 
 
 Considering that the same Master hath given 
 us lodging in this palace for his service, and that 
 they belong, Hke us, to his family, nature hath 
 good reason to enjoin upon us some kind of 
 esteem and affection towards them. Indeed, 
 when all is said, there existeth a common human 
 duty, a certain respect the which attacheth us 
 not only to the beasts who have hfe and senti- 
 ment, but even to the trees and plants. We 
 owe justice to men, and grace and benignity to 
 the other creatures, who are not capable of 
 justice. There is a sort of intercourse between 
 them and us, and a sort of mutual obligation. 
 (Of Cruelty.) 
 
 In how many several sorts of ways do we 
 speak to our dogs and they answer us. 
 
 ... In one kind of barking of a dog the 
 horse knows there is anger. Of another sort 
 of a bark he is not afraid. (The Apology.) 
 
 Movement and activity of body were 
 curiously blended with a certain sluggish- 
 ness. "I move with difficulty and am dila- 
 tory in all things: in getting up, in going to 
 bed, at my meals. Seven o'clock is early for 
 me, and where I am master I never dine 
 before eleven, or sup till after six." (Of 
 Presumption.) "My feet are so unsteady, so 
 unsure, so ready to totter and to feel the 
 earth crumble beneath them — ^my eyesight 
 
i 39 ¥ 
 
 is so ill-regulated — ^that when I fast, I am 
 another man than he who hath eaten a 
 repast." (The Apology.) He could not keep 
 his feet still but in his study he liked to 
 perch them high in front of him. He got 
 great comfort from scratching his head to 
 provoke thought and regarded scratching 
 generally as one of the little physical 
 luxuries of life. "I do not remember that I 
 ever had the itch, and yet scratching is one 
 of nature's sweetest gratifications, and 
 nearest at hand, but the smart follows too 
 near. I use it most in my ears, which are 
 often apt to itch.^ I came into the world 
 with all my senses entire, even to perfection, 
 My stomach is commodiously good, as also 
 is my head and my breath ; and for the most 
 part, uphold themselves so in the height of 
 fevers." (Of Experience.) 
 
 Montaigne's health became seriously im- 
 
 * Walter Harris, writing in 1689, says that eczema 
 and discharging ears were so common in children 
 at this time that they were accepted as a regular 
 part of nature's program. Montaigne's eczema was 
 part of his gout. Fynes Moryson comments on the 
 frequency of itch in Italy and the insouciance with 
 which gentlemen and ladies in pohte society 
 scratched in public and sat down to meat after- 
 wards without washing their hands. 
 
i 40 > 
 
 paired after he had been in retreat in his 
 tower, devoted to study, reflection and writ- 
 ing for about six and a half years. His 
 withdrawal to this sanctum in the first in- 
 stance was doubtless induced in part by 
 considerations of health. 
 
 Every man should have a back-shop all his 
 own ... in which he can establish his liberty, 
 his chief refuge, his best soHtude. And here it is 
 that he must hold his ordinary intercourse 
 with himself . (Of Solitude.) 
 
 Miserable, to my way of thinking, is he who 
 hath no place where he can be at home to 
 himself, where he can privily court himself: 
 where he can hide himself. To me it is much 
 more bearable to be always alone than never.' 
 (Of Three Commerces.) 
 
 His beloved refuge, that famous temple 
 of the soul but for which the world of letters 
 and the world of thought would have been 
 infinitely the poorer, had on the ground floor 
 
 ' In exposition of this thought a number of writers, 
 among them Shakespeare, Gibbon, Froude, Disraeli 
 and Lowell, have expressed themselves pithily. 
 Froude says: "The solitary side of our nature 
 demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on 
 which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long 
 as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect 
 to fasten itself." 
 
Plan and view of Montaigne's Tower, as it appeared in 1823. 
 
 ; Aule] 
 
 2 Comntun/catrvn 
 enffp h cbamhre 
 edachapeUe 
 
 i PetHe Covrienlnt 
 
 2'£ta{c. 
 
 1'!' Etaje 
 
 Rez de Chaussee 
 
4 41 }' 
 
 a chapel. Mass said there could be heard by 
 the lord of the domain lying comfortably 
 in bed above. The second story contained 
 the library and a communicating chamber, 
 cozy and warm. The regular bedroom was 
 on the third story. The walls of the library 
 were decorated with musical instruments, 
 pictures, inscriptions. On the rafters were 
 favorite sayings from Homer, Horace, Plato, 
 Pliny, St. Paul, Terence, Ecclesiastes, the 
 Psalms, etc. The books of which the owner 
 was justly proud, numbered a thousand, 
 a goodly and unusual collection for citi- 
 zen or king. ^ Of these thousand volumes but 
 seventy-six have been positively identified. 
 Someone, by accident, picked up in a second 
 hand shop in Paris his copy of Caesar's "Com- 
 mentaries" with over six hundred anno- 
 tations in the essayist's own hand. We know 
 that he had a Greek Bible, Miinster's "Cos- 
 mography"® (a sort of guide book to Europe), 
 four works on theology — two of them hetero- 
 dox — and five volumes on law and medicine 
 
 * La Boetie on his deathbed bequeathed his entire 
 library to Montaigne. 
 
 ' Sebastian Miinster was for five years professor of 
 Hebrew at Heidelberg where part of his Cosmog- 
 raphy was written. 
 
( Commence de lire ces lines des^uerres ) 
 Ija c/^ f^ f^c^ /^rir^ c /tr ^ /Vct/**^ //•fit!': 
 
 Uo^^^ o6c^i^ ^ '*'>^» -^ ^'^ ' '^ 
 
 Facsimile of Montaigne's annotations in his copy of Caesar's 
 
 "Commentaries." 
 
 {From "Reckerches sur Montaigne, Documents Inidits," by J. F. Payen 
 
 Paris, i8s6.) 
 
4 43 ¥ 
 respectively. In his retirement Montaigne 
 turned to books. He could not play the 
 gentleman farmer and cared nothing for the 
 breeding of cattle nor did the country charm 
 him except as it afforded quiet. He does not 
 gaze from his window to note, like Horace, 
 how deep the snow rests on hillside or 
 mountain; his years of bucohc hfe enabled 
 him to add nothing to the teachings of 
 Virgil. 
 
 The employment a man should choose for a 
 sedentary life, ought neither to be a laborious 
 nor an unpleasing one, otherwise 'tis to no 
 purpose at all to be retired, and this depends 
 upon every one's liking, and humor; mine has 
 no manner of complacency for husbandry, and 
 such as love it, ought to apply themselves to it 
 with moderation. (Of Solitude.) 
 
 I do not so much as understand the names of 
 the chief instruments of husbandry, nor the 
 most ordinary elements of agriculture, which 
 the very children know; much less the mechanic 
 arts, traffic, merchandise, the variety and nature 
 of fruit, wines, and vines: nor how to make a 
 hawk fly, nor to physic a horse, or a dog. And, 
 since I must publish my whole shame, 'tis 
 not above a month ago, that I was trapped in 
 my ignorance of the use of leaven to make 
 
4 44 l" 
 
 bread, or to what end it was to keep wine in 
 the vat. (Of Presumption.) 
 
 Montaigne declined to attend, as was 
 customary, the installation of his successor 
 to the office of Mayor of Bordeaux because 
 the plague was raging in the city. For this 
 he has been blamed.^" Taken by itself the 
 incident seems prejudicial to his reputation 
 but when we recall that on the occasion of La 
 Boetie's last illness he remained constantly 
 at his side though urged by the sick man 
 only to pay frequent visits, because the 
 malady might be contagious (plague was in 
 the neighborhood), we get a deeper insight 
 into the man. To risk his life for a mere form, 
 in obedience to a tradition or custom, seemed 
 foolish. It was something to reason about. 
 Where friendship and love were concerned 
 
 ^'^ The population of Bordeaux in 1585 was less 
 than 40,000. At the time of the pestilence there 
 was a general exodus on the part of everyone who 
 had the means of living elsewhere. The deaths 
 from the plague in Bordeaux, during a period of a 
 few months, were estimated at from 14,000 to 18,000. 
 
 It is to be remembered that residence in Bordeaux 
 was not regarded as an essential obligation of the 
 Mayor. Some of his predecessors had spent the entire 
 period of their incumbency in Paris or elsewhere. 
 His first election to the office occurred while he 
 was abroad. He succeeded Marshal de Biron. 
 
4 45 > 
 there was no room for calculation. In the 
 one case he was characteristically independ- 
 ent, indifferent to criticism, resolved to 
 consult his own interests. In the other he 
 gave no thought to the dictates of prudence. 
 He is well aware of the disposition to 
 panic so common during epidemics, seems to 
 realize that diseases have their definite period 
 of incubation and appreciates the devitalizing 
 effect of fear in certain maladies. 
 
 All diseases are then concluded to be the 
 plague, and people do not stay to examine and 
 be sure whether they have it or no. And the 
 mischief on it is, that, according to the rules 
 of art, in every danger that a man comes near, 
 he must undergo a quarantined^ in the suspense of 
 
 " They are careful to avoid infection of the 
 plague and to that purpose in every city have 
 magistrates for health. So as in times of danger 
 when any city in or near Italy is infected travelers 
 cannot pass by land except they bring a bolletino 
 or certificate of their health from the place whence 
 they come and otherwise must make la quarantina 
 or trial of forty days for their health in a lazaretto 
 or hospital for that purpose. But by sea generally 
 both the men and all the goods of the ship, except 
 they can make clear proof of health in the parts 
 whence they come, must make the said trial of forty 
 days especially ships coming from Constantinople 
 which is seldom free from infection. Fynes Moryson: 
 Itinerary. 
 
4 46 t 
 
 his infirmity; your imagination all that while 
 tormenting you at pleasure, and turning even 
 your health itself into a fever; yet would not all 
 this have gone very near to my heart, had I not 
 withal been compelled to be sensible of others' 
 sufferings, and miserable to serve six months 
 together for a guide to this caravan: for I 
 carry my antidotes within myself, which are 
 resolution and patience. Apprehension, which 
 is particularly feared in this disease, does not so 
 much trouble me. And if, being alone, I should 
 have taken it, it had been a more sprightly and 
 a longer flight. 'Tis a kind of death, that I do 
 not think of the worst sort; 'tis usually short, 
 stupid, without pain, and consolated by the 
 public condition; without ceremony, without 
 mourning, and without a crowd. But as to the 
 people about us, the hundredth part of them 
 could not be saved. (Of Physiognomy.) 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 An Observer and Recorder of Natural 
 Phenomena 
 
 In his minute and full rehearsal of all the 
 symptoms of La Boetie's last illness, "^ in his 
 account of how, during those sad hours of 
 waiting, they conversed together about 
 what the ancient physicians said of the 
 malady, Montaigne showed himself such 
 a keen observer and recorder of the pheno- 
 mena of disease that one is strengthened in 
 the feeling, derived from many manifesta- 
 tions of his mind and heart, that had he 
 lived today he would have been ideally 
 fitted to practice medicine. 
 
 What man of scientific training could 
 write a more accurate and succinct report 
 of a case than the following? 
 
 Two days ago I saw a child, that two men 
 and a nurse, who said themselves to be the 
 
 ' When La Boetie was taken ill, Montaigne urged 
 his removal from Bordeaux partly because of the 
 danger of plague; "besides I had formerly myself 
 found benefit in such a distemper as his from riding 
 on horseback." Montaigne: Letters. 
 
 [47] 
 
4 48 I" 
 
 father, the uncle, and the aunt of it, carried 
 about to get money by showing it, by reason it 
 was so strange a creature. It was, as to all the 
 rest, of a common form, and could stand upon 
 its feet, could go and gabble much hke other 
 children of the same age; it had never as yet 
 taken any other nourishment but from the 
 nurse's breasts, and what, in my presence, they 
 tried to put into the mouth of it, it only chewed 
 a httle, and spit it out again without swallowing; 
 the cry of it seemed indeed a httle odd and 
 particular, and it was just fourteen months old. 
 Under the breast it was joined to another child, 
 but without a head, and that had the spine of 
 the back without motion, the rest entire; for 
 though it had one arm shorter than the other, 
 it had been broken by accident at their birth; 
 they were joined breast to breast, and as if a 
 lesser child would reach the arms about the 
 neck of one something bigger. The juncture 
 and thickness of the place where they were 
 conjoined, was not above four fingers, or there- 
 abouts, so that if you thrust up the imperfect 
 child, you may see the navel of the other below 
 it, and the joining was betwixt the paps and the 
 navel. The navel of the imperfect child could 
 not be seen, but all the rest of the belly; so that 
 all the rest that was not joined of the imperfect 
 one, as arms, buttocks, thighs, and legs, hung 
 dangling upon the other, and might reach to 
 
4 49 }• 
 
 the midleg. The nurse moreover told us that it 
 urined at both bodies, and also the members of 
 the other were nourished, sensibly, and in the 
 same plight with that she gave suck to, except- 
 ing that they were shorter, and less. (Of a 
 Monstrous Child.) 
 
 He sounds like a doctor when he says: 
 
 It is probable that the chief credit of miracles, 
 of visions, and spells, and such abnormal effects, 
 hath its source in the power of imagination, 
 acting principally upon the minds of the vulgar, 
 the which are softer than others. Their belief 
 has been so strongly got hold of, that they 
 think they see what they do not see. (Of the 
 Force of Imaginatian.) 
 
 He realizes the power of the imagination 
 even to kill. 
 
 A woman fancying she had swallowed a 
 piece of bread, cried out of an intolerable pain 
 in her throat, where she thought she felt it 
 stick: but an ingenious fellow that was brought 
 to her, seeing no outward tumor nor alteration, 
 supposing it only to be conceit taken at some 
 crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, 
 caused her to vomit, and cunningly, unseen, 
 threw a crooked pin into the basin, which the 
 woman no sooner saw, but believing she had 
 cast it up, she presently found herself eased of 
 
4 50 t 
 
 her pain. I myself knew a gentleman, who hav- 
 ing treated a great deal of good company at 
 his house, three or four days after bragged in 
 jest (for there was no such thing) that he had 
 made them eat of a baked cat; at which', a 
 young gentlewoman, who had been at the 
 feast, took such a horror, that falling into a 
 violent vomiting and a fever, there was no 
 possible means to save her. Even brute beasts 
 are also subject to the force of imagination 
 as well as we; as is seen by dogs, who die of 
 grief for the loss of their masters, and are seen 
 to quest, tremble, and start, as horses will kick 
 and whinny in their sleep. Now all this may 
 be attributed to the affinity and relation 
 betwixt the souls and bodies of brutes, but 'tis 
 quite another thing when the imagination 
 works upon the souls of rational men, and not 
 only to the prejudice of their own particular 
 bodies, but of others also. (Of the Force of 
 Imagination.) 
 
 He had the physician's contempt for 
 lack of self-control and notes oddities of 
 behavior due to it, to subtle physical 
 instincts or to high-strung nerves. 
 
 Who would be astonished at so strange a 
 constitution as that of Demophon, steward to 
 Alexander the Great, who sweat in the shade. 
 
i 51 I 
 
 and shivered in the sun? I have seen those who 
 have run from the smell of a mellow apple with 
 greater precipitation than from a harquebuse 
 shot; others run away from a mouse, others 
 vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to 
 swoon at the sight of a cat, as Germanicus, who 
 could neither endure the sight nor the crowing 
 of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may 
 peradventure be some occult cause and natural 
 aversion in these cases; but certainly a man 
 might conquer it, if he took it in time. Precept 
 has in this wrought so effectually upon me, 
 though not without some endeavor on my part. 
 Young bodies are supple, one should therefore 
 in that age bend and ply them to all fashions 
 and customs. (Education of Children.) 
 
 Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen, and 
 armorers, could never be able to live in the 
 perpetual noise of their own trades, did it 
 strike their ears with the same violence that it 
 does ours. My perfumed doublet gratifies my 
 own smelhng at first, as well as that of others ; 
 but after I have worn it three or four days 
 together, I no more perceive it, but it is yet 
 more strange, that custom, notwithstanding the 
 long intermissions and intervals, should yet 
 have the power to unite, and establish the effect 
 of its impressions upon our senses, as is mani- 
 fest in such as live near unto steeples, and the 
 frequent noise of the bells. I myself lie at home 
 
4 52 > 
 
 in a tower, where every morning and evening a 
 very great bell rings out the Ave Maria, the 
 noise of which shakes my very tower, and 
 at first seemed insupportable to me; but having 
 now a good while kept that lodging, I am so 
 used to it that I hear it without any manner of 
 offense, and often without awaking at it. 
 (Of Custom.) 
 
 I saw the other day, at my own house, a little 
 fellow who came to show himself for money, a 
 native of Nantes born without arms, who has so 
 well taught his feet to perform the services his 
 hands should have done him, that indeed they 
 have half forgot their natural office, and the 
 use for which they were designed; the fellow too 
 calls them his hands, and we may allow him so 
 to do, for with them he cuts anything, charges 
 and discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, 
 writes, and puts off his hat, combs his head, 
 plays at cards and dice, and all this with as 
 much dexterity as any other could do who had 
 more, and more proper fimbs to assist him; 
 and the money I gave him he carried away in 
 his foot, as we do in our hand. (Of Custom.) 
 
 Physicians hold, that there are certain com- 
 plexions that are agitated by the same sounds 
 and instruments, even to fury. I have seen 
 some, who could not hear a bone gnawed under 
 the table without impatience; and there is 
 scarce any man, who is not disturbed at the 
 
4 53 ¥ 
 
 sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in 
 grating upon the iron; as also to hear chewing 
 near them, or to hear any one speak, who has an 
 impediment in the throat or nose, will move 
 some people even to anger and hatred. (The 
 Apology.) 
 
 On the other hand the spirit reacts on 
 the body: 
 
 To a discontented and afflicted man, the 
 Hght of the day seems dark and overcast. 
 Our senses are not only depraved, but very 
 often stupefied by the passions of the soul. 
 How many things do we see, that we do not 
 take notice of, if the mind be taken up with 
 other thoughts?. . . It appears that the soul 
 retires within, and amuses the power of the 
 senses. And so both the inside, and the outside 
 of man is full of infirmities and mistakes. 
 They who have compared our lives to a dream, 
 were peradventure more in the right than they 
 were aware of; when we dream, the soul lives, 
 works, and exercises all its faculties, neither 
 more nor less, than when awake; but more 
 largely and obscurely; yet not so much neither, 
 that the difference should be as great as betwixt 
 night and the meridional brightness of the sun, 
 but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, 
 here she slumbers; but whether more or less, 
 'tis still dark and Cymmerian darkness. We 
 
4 54 t 
 
 wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so 
 clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, 
 I never found it clear enough, and free from 
 clouds. Moreover, sleep, when it is profound, 
 sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep, 
 but our awaking is never so spritely, that it 
 does rightly, and as it should, purge and dissi- 
 pate those ravings and whimsies, which are 
 waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our 
 reason and soul receiving those fancies and 
 opinions that like come in dreams, and authoriz- 
 ing the actions of our dreams, with the appro- 
 bation that they do those of the day; wherefore 
 do we not doubt, whether our thought and 
 action is another sort of dreaming, and our 
 waking a certain kind of sleep? (The Apology.) 
 
 In his graphic description, too long for 
 citation here, of a severe fall from his 
 horse that caused him to vomit blood and 
 be out of his senses, he carefully analyzes 
 everything; automatic and involuntary 
 movements; the distinction between mole- 
 cular and somatic death; partial return to 
 consciousness with its vague, delightful 
 unreality; instinctive acts; the existence of 
 a subconscious ego. From the memory of 
 the episode he argues that death, to which 
 he had come near, may be very far from 
 
i 55 > 
 the horrible experience to the victim of it 
 that the alarmed and sorrowing witnesses 
 imagine. 
 
 My stomach was so oppressed with the coagu- 
 lated blood, that my hands moved to that part 
 of their own voluntary motion, as they fre- 
 quently do to the part that itches, without 
 being directed by our will. There are several 
 animals and even men, in whom one may per- 
 ceive the muscles to stir and tremble after 
 they are dead. Having been by the way, and 
 two long hours after, given over for a dead 
 man, I began to move and to fetch my breath ; 
 for so great abundance of blood was falling into 
 my stomach, that nature had need to rouse her 
 forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon 
 my feet, where I threw off a great quantity of 
 pure florid blood, as I had also done several 
 times by the way, which gave me so much ease, 
 that I began to recover a httle Ufe, but so 
 leisurely and by so small advances, that my 
 first sentiments were much nearer the 
 approaches of death than Hfe. The remembrance 
 of this accident, which is very well imprinted 
 in my memory, so naturally representing to 
 me the image and idea of death, has in some 
 sort reconciled me to that untoward accident. 
 When I first began to open my eyes after my 
 trance, it was with so perplexed, so weak and 
 
4 5^ > 
 dead a sight, that I could yet distinguish noth- 
 ing, and could only discern the hght. As to 
 the functions of the soul, they advanced with 
 the same pace and measure with those of the 
 body. I saw myself all bloody, my doublet being 
 stained and spotted all over with the blood I 
 had vomited; and the first thought that came 
 into my mind, was, that I had a harquebuse 
 shot in my head; and indeed at the same time, 
 there were a great many fired round about us. 
 Methought, my life but just hung upon my 
 lips, and I shut my eyes, to help, methought, 
 to thrust it out; and took a pleasure in languish- 
 ing and letting myself go. It was an imagination 
 that only superficially floated upon my soul, as 
 tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not 
 only exempt from pain, but mixed with that 
 sweetness and pleasure that people are sensible 
 of, when they indulge themselves to drop into a 
 slumber. I believe it is the very same condition 
 those people are in, whom we see to swoon with 
 weakness, in the agony of death, and am of 
 opinion that we lament them without cause, 
 supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, 
 or that their souls suff"er under painful thoughts. 
 ... So it happens that in the yawning of 
 sleep, before it has fully possessed us to per- 
 ceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, 
 and to follow the last things are said with a per- 
 plexed and uncertain hearing, which seem but to 
 
i 57 > 
 touch upon the borders of the soul; and make 
 answers to the last words have been spoken to 
 us, which have more in them of fortune than 
 sense. Now seeing I have effectually tried it, 
 I make no doubt but I have hitherto made a 
 right judgment. For first being in a swoon, I 
 labored with both hands to rip open the buttons 
 of my doublet, (for I was without arms) and 
 yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt 
 me; for we have many motions in us, that do 
 not proceed from our direction. ... As I 
 drew near my own house, where the alarm of 
 my fall was already got before me, and that my 
 family were come out to meet me, with the 
 hubbub usual in such cases; I did not only make 
 some httle answer to some questions were asked 
 me, but they moreover tell me, that I had so 
 much sense about me as to order them to give 
 a horse to my wife, who, I saw, was toihng 
 and laboring along the road, which was a 
 steep and uneasy one.^ This consideration 
 should seem to proceed from a soul, that 
 retained its functions, but it was nothing so 
 with me. I knew not what I said or did, and 
 they were nothing but idle thoughts in the 
 clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the 
 eyes and ears, and proceeded not from me. 
 I knew not for all that, or whence I came, or 
 whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh 
 
 '■' Cotton's translation as properly corrected by Hazlitt. 
 
4 58 ¥ 
 
 and consider, what was said to me: these were 
 hght effects, that the senses produced of them- 
 selves, as of custom; what the soul contributed 
 was in a dream, as being hghtly touched, licked 
 and bedewed by the soft impression of the 
 senses. Notwithstanding, my condition was in 
 truth very easy and quiet, I had no afflictions 
 upon me, either for others or myself. It was an 
 extreme drooping and weakness without any 
 manner of pain. I saw my own house, but knew 
 it not. When they had put me to bed, I found 
 an inexpressible sweetness in that repose; for I 
 had been damnably tugged and lugged by those 
 poor people, who had taken the pains to carry 
 me upon their arms a very great and a very ill 
 way, and had in so doing all quite tired out 
 themselves twice or thrice one after another. 
 They offered me several remedies but I would 
 take none, certainly believing that I was mor- 
 tally wounded in the head. And in earnest, it 
 had been a very happy death, for the weakness 
 of my understanding, deprived me of the 
 faculty of discerning, and that of my body from 
 the sense of feeHng. I suffered myself to ghde 
 away so sweetly, and after so soft and easy a 
 manner, that I scarce find any other action less 
 troublesome than that was. This long story, of 
 so hght an accident, would appear vain enough, 
 were it not for the knowledge I have gained by 
 it for my own use; for I do really find, that to be 
 
i 59 ¥ 
 acquainted with death, is no more but nearly 
 to approach it. (Use Makes Perfectness.) 
 
 Such as have been acquainted with these 
 faintings, proceeding from weakness, do say 
 that they are therein sensible of no manner of 
 pain, but rather feel a kind of dehght, as in a 
 passage to sleep and rest. These are studied 
 and digested deaths. (Of Judgment of the 
 Death of Another.) 
 
 THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SENSES 
 
 He goes deeply into the question of the 
 senses, affirming that we cannot deny the 
 evidences they adduce of the reality of 
 externals. 
 
 The senses are our proper and first judges, 
 which perceive not things but by external 
 accidents. (Of the Act of Conferring.) 
 
 There can be nothing absurd to a greater 
 degree, than to maintain that fire does not warm, 
 that light does not shine, and, that there is no 
 weight nor solidity in iron, which are advertise- 
 ments conveyed to us by the senses; neither is 
 there belief nor knowledge in man, that can be 
 compared to that for certainty. The first con- 
 sideration I have upon the subject of the senses 
 is, that I make a doubt whether or no man be 
 furnished with all natural senses. I see several 
 animals who hve an entire and perfect life, 
 
4 6o ]»■ 
 
 some without sight, others without hearing: 
 who knows whether to us also, one, two, or 
 three, or many other senses may not be want- 
 ing? For if any one be wanting, our examination 
 cannot discover the defect. 'Tis the privilege 
 of the senses to be the utmost limit of our 
 discovery: there is nothing beyond them that 
 can assist us in exploration, not so much as one 
 sense in the discovery of another. ... It 
 is impossible to make a man naturally blind, 
 conceive that he does not see, impossible to 
 make him desire sight, or to be sensible of his 
 defect. (The Apology.) 
 
 He raises the question whether animals 
 may not be possessed of senses we lack. 
 
 What do we know but that the difficulties 
 which we find in several effects of animals 
 which exceed our capacity, are not produced 
 by faculty of some sense that we are defective 
 in? And whether some of them have not by this 
 means a life more full and entire than ours? 
 We seize an apple as it were with all our senses : 
 we there find redness, smoothness, odor, and 
 sweetness? But it may have other virtues 
 besides these, as to heat, or bind, which no 
 sense of ours can have any reference unto. 
 Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties 
 in nature that are fit to judge of, and to dis- 
 cern those which we call the occult properties 
 
4 6i |s- 
 
 in several things, as for the loadstone to attract 
 iron; and that the want of such faculties is the 
 cause that we are ignorant of the true essence 
 of such things? 'Tis perad venture some par- 
 ticular sense that gives cocks to understand 
 what hour it is of midnight, and when it grows 
 to be towards day, and that makes them to crow 
 accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they 
 have any experience of what they are, to fear 
 a spar-hawk, and not a goose, or a peacock, 
 though birds of a much larger size; that cau- 
 tions them of the hostile quahty the cat has 
 against them, and makes them not to fear a 
 dog? To arm themselves against the mewing 
 (a kind of flattering voice) of the one, and not 
 against the barking, a shrill and threatening 
 voice of the other. That teaches Wasps, ants, 
 and rats, to fall upon the best pear, and the 
 best cheese, before they have tasted them, and 
 inspires the stag, elephant, and serpents, with 
 the knowledge of a certain herb proper for their 
 cure. There is no sense that has not a mighty 
 dominion, and that does not by its power 
 introduce an infinite number of knowledges. 
 If we were defective in the intelligence of sounds 
 of music, and of the voice, it would cause an 
 inimaginable confusion in all the rest of our 
 science. For, besides what appertains to the 
 proper eff"ect of every sense, how many argu- 
 ments, consequences, and conclusions do we draw 
 
4 62 ]* 
 
 to other things, by comparing one sense with 
 another? Let an understanding man imagine 
 human nature originally produced without 
 the sense of seeing, and consider what ignorance 
 and trouble such a defect would bring upon 
 him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; 
 he will then see by that, of how great impor- 
 tance to the knowledge of truth, the privation 
 of such another sense, or of two or three, should 
 we be so deprived, would be. We have formed 
 a truth by the consultation and concurrence of 
 our five senses, but peradventure, we should 
 have the consent and contribution of eight or 
 ten, to make a certain discovery of our own 
 being. The sects that controvert the knowledge 
 of man, do it principally by the incertainty and 
 weakness of our senses.^ For since all knowledge 
 is by their means and mediation conveyed unto 
 us, if they fail in their report, if they corrupt, 
 or alter what they bring us from without, if 
 the hght which by them creeps into the soul be 
 
 ' At a period when . the mind still trembled 
 
 before the authority of the Church ... no wonder 
 that even Montaigne, who did so much for his age, 
 should have hesitated respecting the capacity of 
 men to work out for themselves great truths; and 
 that pausing in the course that lay before him, his 
 scepticism should often have assumed the form of a 
 distrust of the human faculties. Buckle: History 
 of Civilization in England. 
 
i 63 > 
 
 obscured in the passage, we have nothing else 
 to hold by. (The Apology.) 
 
 Despite his fear of the doctors he would 
 have made a poor Christian Scientist. 
 
 Like a musket-bullet, under the forefinger, 
 the middle finger being lapped over it, which 
 feels so Hke two, that a man will have much ado 
 to persuade himself there is but one; the end 
 of the two fingers feeling each of them one 
 at the same time. For that the senses are 
 very often masters of our reason, and constrain 
 it to receive impressions which it judges and 
 knows to be false, is frequently seen. I set 
 aside the sense of feehng, that has its functions 
 nearer, more lively and substantial; that so 
 often by the eff"ect of the pains it helps the body 
 to subvert and overthrows all those fine stoical 
 resolutions, and compels him to cry out of his 
 belly, who has resolutely estabhshed this 
 doctrine in his soul, that the colic, and all 
 other pains and diseases are indifferent things; 
 not having the power to abate anything of the 
 sovereign felicity, wherein the wise man is 
 seated by his virtue. (The Apology.) 
 
 Objective realities exist. There are quali- 
 ties inherent in matter whether we perceive 
 them or not. 
 
4 64 > 
 
 For, it is not said, that the essence of things 
 have a relation to man only; hardness, white- 
 ness, depth and sharpness, have reference 
 to the service and knowledge of animals as well 
 as to us; and nature has equally designed them 
 for their use. When we press down the eye, the 
 body that we look upon, we perceive to be 
 longer, and more extended; many beasts have 
 their eyes so pressed down: this length there- 
 fore is peradventure the true form of that body, 
 and not that which our eyes give it in the usual 
 state. If we close the lower part of the eye, 
 things appear double to us. If our ears be 
 hindered, or the passage stopped with anything, 
 we receive the sound quite otherwise, than we 
 usually do; the animals Hkewise, who have 
 either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole 
 instead of an ear, do not consequently hear as 
 we do; but another kind of sound. We see at 
 festivals and theaters, the opposing a painted 
 glass of a certain color to the light of the 
 flambeaus, all things in the room appear to us 
 green, yellow or violet. . . . 'Tis likely that the 
 eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers 
 colors, do produce the appearance of bodies 
 the same with their eyes. We should therefore, 
 to make a right judgment of the operations 
 of the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and 
 secondly, amongst ourselves, which we by no 
 means are, but enter at every turn into dispute; 
 
4 6s > 
 
 forasmuch as one hears, sees, or tastes some- 
 thing otherwise than another does, and con- 
 tests as much as upon any other thing, of the 
 diversity of the images that the senses represent 
 to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of nature, 
 hears, sees and tastes otherwise than a man of 
 thirty years old, and he, than one of three-score. 
 The senses are in some more obscure and dusky, 
 and more open and quick in others; and we 
 receive things variously according as we are, 
 and accordingly as they appear to us. Now our 
 perception being so uncertain and contraverted, 
 it is no more a wonder if we are told that we 
 may declare that snow appears white to us, but 
 that to affirm that it is in its own essence really 
 so, is more than we are able to justify: and this 
 foundation being shaken, all the knowledge in 
 the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What, 
 do our senses themselves hinder one another? 
 A picture seems raised and embossed to the 
 sight, in the handling it seems flat to the 
 touch: shall we say that musk, which dehghts 
 the smell, and is offensive to the taste, is 
 agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents, 
 proper for one part of the body, that are hurtful 
 to another: honey is pleasant to the taste, 
 but offensive to the sight. As we see in the bread 
 we eat, it is nothing but bread, but by being 
 eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair and 
 nails. . . . The humidity sucked up by the 
 
4 66 > 
 
 root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf and fruit; 
 and the air being but one, is modulated in a 
 trumpet to a thousand sorts of sounds. Are they 
 our senses, I would fain know, that in like 
 manner form these subjects into so many divers 
 qualities, or have they them really such in 
 themselves? And upon this doubt, what can we 
 determine of their true essence? Moreover, 
 since the accidents of diseases, of raving, or 
 sleep, make things appear otherwise to us 
 than they do to the healthful, the wise, and 
 those that are awake; is it not Hkely, that our 
 right posture of health and understanding, and 
 our natural humours, have also wherewith to 
 give a being to things that have relation to their 
 own condition, and accommodate them to 
 themselves, as well as when they are disordered; 
 and our health as capable of giving them an 
 aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate 
 a certain form of objects relative to it as well 
 as the intemperate: and why may it not as well 
 stamp it with its own character as the other? 
 He whose mouth is out of taste, says the wine is 
 flat, the healthful man commends its flavor, 
 and the thirsty its briskness. Now our condi- 
 tion always accommodating things to itself, 
 and transforming them according to its own 
 posture, we cannot know what things truly are 
 in themselves, being that nothing comes to us 
 but what is falsified and altered by the senses. 
 
4 67 I- 
 
 Where the compass, the square, and the rule 
 are crooked, all propositions drawn from 
 thence, and all building erected by those guides, 
 must of necessity be also defective. The uncer- 
 tainty of our senses renders everything uncer- 
 tain that they produce. (The Apology.) 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Prejudice Against Physicians 
 
 Like his father, Montaigne professed a 
 horror of doctors. This was strengthened 
 perhaps by a conviction that his friend 
 La Boetie might have recovered but for the 
 ill-advised ministrations of his physician, 
 and in one of his last essays he indulges 
 in a diatribe against the faculty which we 
 may all read with profit. But what he con- 
 fessed and what he professed sometimes 
 showed a certain lack of harmony in line 
 with the many apparent contradictions of 
 his character. Looking below the surface we 
 find that Montaigne saw the foibles of the 
 doctors of his day, had the intelhgence to 
 appreciate the mistakes they made but was 
 not carried away by prejudice. 
 
 We repute physicians fortunate when they 
 hit upon a lucky cure, as if there were no other 
 art but theirs that could not stand upon its 
 own legs, and whose foundations are too weak 
 to support itself upon its own basis, and as if 
 no other art stood in need of fortune's hand to 
 assist in its operations. For my part, I think of 
 [68] 
 
i 69 > 
 
 physic as much good or ill as anyone would 
 have me; for, thanks be to God, we have no 
 great traffic together. I am of a quite contrary 
 humour to other men, for I always despise it; 
 but when I am sick, instead of recanting, or 
 entering into composition with it, I begin yet 
 more to hate, nauseate, and fear it, telling them 
 who importune me to enter into a course of 
 physic, that they must give me time to recover 
 my strength and health, that I may be the 
 better able to support and encounter the violence 
 and danger of the potion*: so that I still let na- 
 ture work, supposing her to be sufficiently 
 armed with teeth and claws to defend herself 
 from the assaults of infirmity, and to uphold 
 that contexture, the dissolution of which 
 she flies and abhors : for I am afraid, lest instead 
 of assisting her when grappled, and struggling, 
 with the disease, I should assist her adversary, 
 and procure new work, and new accidents to 
 encounter. (Various Events, etc.) 
 
 He was really a friend of medicine and 
 believed in the healing art, though he says, 
 with his usual outspoken and unassuming 
 frankness, that the doctors had done him 
 
 1 1 firmly believe that if the whole materia medica 
 could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be 
 all the better for mankind and all the worse for the 
 fishes. O. W. Holmes. 
 
i 70 > 
 
 no good. His pages reflect a terrible but 
 true picture of the state of medicine in his 
 day^ and when we realize that his excruciat- 
 ing pain was unrelieved, that he suffered 
 from a complaint that we cannot heal today 
 with all our science, we must credit Mon- 
 taigne with unusual fairness to see any good 
 in us or our calling. Though he professed to 
 repudiate us utterly still he did not do so. 
 Little as he expected from them, he called 
 in the doctors. 
 
 His writings abound with illustrations 
 drawn from anatomy, physiology and path- 
 ology and he loved to express his ideas 
 by references to the body : 
 
 Force and nerves cannot be borrowed; you 
 can only borrow cloaks and furbelows. . . 
 Those who have a thin body, stuff it out with 
 padding; those who have thin subject-matter 
 swell it out with words. (Education of Children.) 
 
 For tender stomachs there is need of artificial 
 ordinances and constraint; good stomachs 
 simply make use of the ordinances prescribed 
 by natural appetites. (Of Vanity.) 
 
 ^ The atrocities committed in the name of medicine 
 are amusingly, graphically and correctly set forth 
 in Le Sage's "Gil Bias," which, though published 
 in the eighteenth century, applies to earlier 
 conditions. 
 
4 71 I" 
 
 Intemperance is the pestilence which killeth 
 pleasure, and temperance is not the flail of 
 pleasure, it is the seasoning thereof. (Of 
 Experience.) 
 
 And as we see women that without the knowl- 
 ledge of men do sometimes of themselves bring 
 forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, 
 but that to cause a natural and perfect genera- 
 tion they are to be husbanded with another 
 kind of seed. (Of Idleness.) 
 
 A physician takes no pleasure in the health 
 even of his friends, says the ancient comical 
 Greek, nor a soldier in the peace of his country; 
 and so of the rest. And, which is yet worse, 
 let every one but dive into his own bosom, and 
 he will find his private wishes spring and his 
 sacred hopes grow up at another's expense. 
 (Profit of One Man is the Inconvenience of 
 Another.) 
 
 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to 
 vomit up what we eat in the same condition it 
 was swallowed down, and the stomach has not 
 performed its office, unless it has altered the 
 form and condition of what was committed 
 to it to concoct. (Education of Children.) 
 
 And as they say, that in our bodies there is a 
 congregation of divers humors, of which, that 
 is the sovereign, which according to the com- 
 plexion we are of, is commonly most predomi- 
 nant in us; so, though the soil have in it divers 
 
4 72 > 
 
 motions to give it agitation; yet must there 
 of necessity be one to over-rule all the rest. 
 (Cato the Younger.) 
 
 Do fevers, gouts and apoplexies, spare them 
 any more, than one of us? When old age hangs 
 heavy upon a prince's shoulders, can the yeomen 
 of his guard' ease him of the burden? When he is 
 astonished with the apprehension of death, 
 can the gentlemen of his bed-chamber comfort 
 and assure him? When jealousy, or any other 
 capricio swims in his brain, can our comple- 
 ments and ceremonies restore him to his good 
 humour? The canopy embroidered with pearl 
 and gold, he Hes under, has no virtue against a 
 violent fit of the stone or coHc. . . .He is a 
 sot, his taste is palled and flat; he no more 
 enjoys what he has, than one that has a cold 
 relishes the flavour of canary; or than a horse 
 is sensible of his rich caparison. (Of the In-, 
 equahty Amongst Us.) 
 
 Could virtue itself put on flesh and blood, 
 
 ' La mort a des rigueurs a nulle autre pareilles. 
 On a beau la prier. 
 La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles 
 
 Et nous laisse crier. 
 Le pauvre en sa cabane ou le chaume le couvre 
 
 Est sujet a ses lofs; 
 Et la garde qui veille aux barri^res du Louvre 
 N'en defend point nos rois. F. Malherbe 
 (1555-1628). 
 
i 73 > 
 
 I believe the pulse would beat faster going on 
 to an assault, than in going to dinner: that is to 
 say, there is a necessity she should beat, and be 
 moved upon this account. I have taken notice, 
 as of an extra-ordinary thing of some great 
 men, who in the highest enterprises, and great- 
 est dangers, have detained themselves in so 
 settled and serene a calm, as not at all to hinder 
 their usual gayety, or break their sleep. (Of 
 Sleep.) 
 
 So falling people extend their arms before 
 them by a natural impulse, which prompts them 
 to offices and motions, without any commission 
 from us. (Use Makes Perfectness.) 
 
 I would as willingly lend a man my blood, 
 as my pains. (Of Presumption.) 
 
 The diseases of the body explain themselves 
 in increasing. We find that to be the gout, which 
 we called a rheumatism or a strain. The diseases 
 of the soul, the greater they are, keep them- 
 selves the more obscure; and the most sick are 
 the least sensible. Therefore it is that with an 
 unrelenting hand, they must often in the day 
 be taken to task, opened and torn from the 
 hollow of the heart. (Upon Some Verses of 
 Virgil.) 
 
 These continual tricking drops make ulcers 
 in me. . . .The Chirurgion's end is not only 
 to eat away the dead flesh, that is but the 
 progress of his cure, he has a care over and 
 
"*[ 74 I* 
 
 above to fill up the wound with better and more 
 natural flesh, and restore the member to its 
 due estate. Whoever only proposes to himself 
 to remove that which offends him, falls short, 
 for good does not necessarily succeed evils; 
 another evil may succeed and a worse. . . . 
 Who knows but that God will have it happen, 
 as it does in human bodies, that purge and 
 restore themselves to a better estate by long 
 and grievous maladies; which restores them a 
 more entire and perfect health than that they 
 took from them? (Of Vanity.) 
 
 I fancy that those features and moulds of a 
 face, and those lineaments by which men guess 
 at our internal complexions, and our fortunes to 
 come, is a thing that does not very directly and 
 simply he under the chapter of beauty and 
 deformity, no more than every good odor and 
 serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and 
 stink, infection and a time of pestilence. Such 
 as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty 
 by their manners, do not always hit right; for, 
 in a face which is none of the best, there may lie 
 some air of probity and trust: as, on the con- 
 trary, I have seen betwixt two beautiful eyes, 
 menaces of a dangerous and malignant nature. 
 There are some physiognomies that are favor- 
 able, so that in a crowd of victorious enemies, 
 you shall presently choose, amongst men you 
 never saw before, one rather than another, 
 
4 75 > 
 
 to whom to surrender, and with whom to in- 
 trust your life, and yet not properly upon the 
 consideration of beauty. (Of Physiognomy.) 
 
 Speaking of the propriety of referring a 
 matter to the person proficient in it he says 
 of physicians: "I upon that account the 
 rather incline to credit what they report 
 of the temperature of the air, of the health 
 and complexions of princes, of wounds 
 and diseases." (A Proceeding of Some 
 Ambassadors.) 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Montaigne's Views On His Own 
 Ailments 
 
 In his essay on "The Resemblance of 
 Children to their Fathers," Montaigne 
 laments that he was afflicted with the 
 particular disease that attacked him towards 
 middle Hfe. How human! We always think 
 we would be better off with a different 
 malady — that an injured foot would hurt 
 less than a hand or vice versa according 
 to which it is. "I am grown older by seven 
 or eight years since I began [writing], 
 neither has it been without some new 
 acquisition. I have in that time been 
 acquainted with the stone. Age could 
 not possibly have laid upon me a disease 
 for which, even from my infancy, I have had 
 so great a horror and it is in truth of all the 
 accidents of old age that of which I have 
 ever been most afraid." His father, towards 
 the close of a long and active life, was a prey 
 to the same malady and this perhaps 
 accounts in part for his horror of it, an 
 [76] 
 
4 77 If 
 
 almost superstitious dread of the gout being 
 over him like a cloud. 
 
 Mothers have reason to rebuke their children 
 when they counterfeit having but one eye, squint- 
 ing, lameness, or any other personal defect; for 
 besides that their bodies being then so tender 
 may be subject to take an ill bent, fortune, I 
 know not how, sometimes seems to delight in 
 taking us at our word; and I have heard several 
 examples related of people who have become 
 really sick by only feigning to be so. I have 
 always used, whether on horseback, or on foot, 
 to carry a stick in my hand, and so as to affect 
 doing it with a grace. Many have threatened 
 that this wantonness would one day be turned 
 into necessity, that is, that I should be the 
 first of my family that should have the gout. 
 (Not to Counterfeit Being Sick.) 
 
 A more potent factor doubtless, in his 
 dislike to the so-called healing art, was the 
 full knowledge and appreciation of the 
 barbarities of the "cutters" of the day, of 
 the ignorant and violent methods they used 
 for their cures, of the character of so-called 
 surgery. Here is the true philosopher speak- 
 ing. "Yet in eighteen months time or there- 
 about that I have been in this uneasy condi- 
 tion I have so inured myself to it as to be 
 
4 78 > 
 
 content to live in it and have found wherein 
 to comfort myself and to hope." 
 
 He says of the stone: "I am in conflict 
 with the worst, the most sudden, the most 
 painful, the most mortal and the most 
 irremediable of all diseases, " but he opines 
 that even this dread malady "is very well to 
 be endured by a man who has his soul free 
 from the fear of death, and the menaces, 
 conclusions and consequences which physic 
 is ever thundering in our ears." He trusts 
 that the affliction of stone will overcome 
 whatever in him still revolts at the thought 
 of death and conquer his fear thereof, hop- 
 ing at the same time that God will save him 
 from going to the other extreme of desiring 
 and wishing to die should the sharpness of 
 his torture in the end prove greater than he 
 can bear. 
 
 He thinks that external fortitude which 
 subdues all expressions of suffering not an 
 indispensable thing if the soul is indomitable. 
 " 'Tis no great matter what faces we cut if 
 we find any ease by it . . .if agitation 
 eases him let him tumble and toss at pleas- 
 ure; if he finds the disease evaporate (as 
 some physicians hold that it helps women in 
 delivery) extremely to cry out or if it do but 
 amuse his torments, let him roar aloud." 
 
i 79 > 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that, as a 
 great sufferer and one who steeped in classic 
 lore had the example of the ancients before 
 him, he should have considered suicide. He 
 reviews the subject pro and con and his 
 final conclusion is heroic, beautiful. 
 
 Pliny says, there are three sorts of diseases, 
 to escape any of which a man has a good title 
 to destroy himself; the worst of which is the 
 stone in the bladder, when the urine is sup- 
 pressed. . . For a desperate disease a desperate 
 cure . . . The stoicks say, that it is living ac- 
 cording to nature in a wise man to take his leave 
 of life even in the height of prosperity, if he do it 
 opportunely, and in a fool to prolong it, though 
 he be miserable, provided he be indigent of 
 those things, which are reputed the necessaries 
 of human life. As I do not offend the law pro- 
 vided against thieves, when I embezzle my own 
 money, and cut my own purse, nor that against 
 incendiaries, when I burn my own wood; so am 
 I not under the fash of those made against 
 murderers, for having deprived myseff of my 
 own fife. Hegesius said, that as the condition 
 of fife did, so the condition of death ought 
 to depend upon our own choice; and Diogenes 
 meeting the phifosopher Speusippus, so bfown 
 up with an inveterate dropsy that he was fain 
 to be carried in a fitter, and by him safuted with 
 
4 8o > 
 
 the compliment of, I wish you good health; 
 no health to thee, replied the other, who art 
 content to live in such a condition. And in 
 truth, not long after, Speusippus weary of so 
 languishing an estate of life, found a means to 
 die. But this does not pass without admitting 
 a dispute: for many are of opinion, that we 
 cannot quit this garrison of the world, without 
 the express command of him, who has placed us 
 in it: and that it appertains to God, who has 
 placed us here, not for ourselves only, but for 
 his glory, and the service of others, to dismiss 
 us when it shall best please him, and not for us 
 to depart without his license: but we are not 
 born for ourselves only, but for our country 
 also, the laws of which require an account from 
 us, upon the score of their own interest, and 
 have an action of man-slaughter good against 
 us. Or if these fail to take cognizance of the 
 fact, we are punished in the other world, as 
 deserters of our duty. There is more constancy 
 in suffering the chain we are tied in, than in 
 breaking it. . . .No accidents can make true 
 virtue turn her back. (The Custom of the Isle of 
 Cea.) 
 
 In analyzing pain and pleasure he says: 
 
 Philosophy, when she has said all she can 
 refers us, at last, to the example of a wrestler, 
 or a muleteer, in which sort of people we com- 
 
4 8i > 
 
 monly observe much less apprehension of death, 
 sense of pain, and other infirmities, and more 
 constancy, than ever knowledge furnished any 
 one withal, that was born without those infirmi- 
 ties, and of himself prepared by a natural habit. 
 . . .When real infirmities fail us, knowledge 
 lends us hers: that color, that complexion, por- 
 tend some defluxion: this hot season threatens 
 us with a fever: this breach in the life-fine of 
 your left hand, gives you notice of some near 
 and dangerous indisposition, and at last, 
 roundly attacks health itself; saying this 
 spriteKness and vigor of youth, cannot continue 
 in this posture, there must be blood taken, and 
 the heat abated, let it run to your prejudice. 
 Compare the fife of a man subjected to such 
 imaginations, to that of a laborer that suff"ers 
 himself to be led by his natural appetite, 
 measuring things only by the present sense, 
 without knowledge, and without prognostic, 
 that feels no pain or sickness, but when he is 
 really tormented or sick: whereas the other 
 has the stone in his soul, before he has it either 
 in his reins or bladder: as if it were not time 
 enough to suffer the evil when it shall come 
 he must anticipate it by fancy, and run to meet 
 it. What I say of physic, may generally serve 
 in example for all other sciences: from thence 
 is derived that ancient opinion of philosophers, 
 that placed the sovereign good, in the discovery 
 
4 82 > 
 
 of the weakness of our judgment. My ignorance 
 affords me as much occasion of hope, as of fear: 
 and having no other rule for my health, than 
 that of the examples of others, and of events I 
 see elsewhere upon the like occasion: I find of 
 all sorts, and rely upon those which by compari- 
 son are most favorable to me. I receive health 
 with open arms, free, full and entire, and by so 
 much it is at present less ordinary, and more 
 rare: so far am I from troubling its repose and 
 sweetness, with the bitterness of a new and 
 constrained manner of living. . .Would you 
 have a man sound, would you have him 
 regular, and in a steady and secure posture? 
 Muffle him up in the shades of stupidity and 
 sloth. ^ We must be made beasts to be made 
 wise, and hoodwinked before we are fit to be led. 
 And if one shall tell me that the advantage of 
 having a cold and stupid sense of pain and other 
 evils, brings this disadvantage along with it, 
 to render us consequently less sensible also in 
 the fruition of good and pleasure; this is true; 
 but the misery of our condition is such, that we 
 have not so much to enjoy, as to avoid, and that 
 the extremest pleasure does not affect us to the 
 degree that a light grief does. . .1 do not 
 approve such an insensibility, as is neither 
 possible, nor to be desired. I am very well 
 content not to be sick: but if I am, I would 
 ^ I Corinthians i. 27-28. 
 
i 83 l" 
 
 know that I am so; and if a caustic be applied 
 or incisions made in any part, I would feel 
 them. In truth, whoever would take away the 
 knowledge and sense of evil, would at the same 
 time eradicate the sense of pleasure, and finally 
 annihilate man himself. (The Apology.) 
 
 For himself, Montaigne, though confes- 
 sing to an occasional "peevishness and 
 crabbed humor" in a very sharp fit, has 
 never arrived at "such a degree of despair 
 as to bellow and make uproar." He was 
 never beside himself with pain to the ex- 
 tent of not being able "to speak, think and 
 give a rational answer as well as at any 
 other time" but he could not do so as coldly 
 and indifl'erently as when free from pain. 
 "In the intervals from excessive torment 
 when my ureters only languish without any 
 great dolor I presently, feel myself in my 
 wonted state." 
 
 Speaking of colic: "It begins with me 
 after a more sharp and severe manner than 
 it uses to do with other men. My fits come 
 so thick upon me that I am scarcely ever at 
 ease" and he adds that he is better off than 
 a thousand others who have no fever, no 
 other disease but what they create for 
 themselves for want of meditation. His 
 
4 84 I* 
 
 description of the impaction and descent of 
 a stone is classic. "Thou art seen to sweat 
 with pain, to look pale and red, to tremble, 
 to vomit well-nigh to blood, to suflFer strange 
 contortions and convulsions, by starts to 
 let tears drop from thine eyes, to urine 
 thick, black, and frightful water, or to 
 have it suppressed by some sharp and 
 craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears 
 thee." 
 
 Montaigne believed that he derived his 
 trouble from his father but does not 
 understand how it was transmitted. 
 
 He died wonderfully tormented with a great 
 stone in his bladder. He was never sensible of 
 his disease till the 67th year of his age and before 
 that had never felt any grudging or symptoms 
 of it either in his loins, sides or any other part 
 and had lived till then in a happy vigorous state 
 of health. . .he continued seven years after 
 in this disease and died a very painful death . . 
 I was born twenty-five years before his disease 
 seized him and in the time of his most flourish- 
 ing and healthful state of body, his third child 
 in order of birth; where could his propensity 
 to this malady lurk all that while. . .and how 
 so concealed that till five and forty years after 
 I did not begin to be sensible of it? . . . What 
 
4 85 t 
 
 a wonderful thing it is that the drop of seed 
 from which we are produced should carry in 
 itself the impressions, not only of the bodily 
 form, but even of the thoughts and inclinations 
 of our fathers. (Resemblance of Children to 
 their Fathers.) 
 
 PRESERVATION OF HEALTH 
 
 Montaigne was a great believer in the 
 cult of health, in that preventive medicine 
 not yet crystallized into a branch of the art 
 but dimly apprehended through the ages. 
 "Tis no time to bathe and clean a man's 
 self when he is seized on by a violent fever 
 ... I am more solicitous to improve my 
 health when I am well, than to restore it 
 when I am sick," (Of Vanity.) 
 
 His ideas about the insanitary pocket- 
 handkerchief must often have occurred to 
 many of us but civilization increasingly 
 imposes obligations distasteful or harmful 
 to the individual in the interests of the 
 community. 
 
 A French gentleman, of my acquaintance, was 
 always wont to blow his nose with his fingers 
 (a thing very much against our fashion) would 
 justify himself for so doing and was a man very 
 famous for pleasant repartees, who, upon that 
 occasion, asked me what privilege this filthy 
 
4 86 > 
 
 excrement had, that we must carry about us a 
 fine handkerchief to receive it, and which was 
 more, afterwards to lap it carefully up, and 
 carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he 
 said, could not be much more nauseous and 
 offensive, than to see it thrown away, as we did 
 all other evacuations. I found that what he said 
 was not altogether without reason, and by being 
 frequently in his company, that slovenly action 
 of his was at last grown familiar to me; which 
 nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it 
 reported of another country. (Of Custom.) 
 
 Montaigne attached importance to odors. 
 
 But the ordinary constitution of human bodies 
 is quite otherwise, and their best and chiefest 
 excellence, is to be exempt from smells; nay, 
 the sweetness even of the purest breaths, has 
 nothing in it of greater perfection, than to be 
 without any offensive smell, but those of 
 healthful children. And such as make use of 
 these exotic perfumes, are with good reason to 
 be suspected of some natural imperfection, 
 which they endeavor by these odors to conceal.^ 
 (Of Smells.) 
 
 '^ Plutarch, Montaigne's favorite source of histor- 
 ical data, says that the perspiration of Alexander the 
 Great had an agreeable odor. 
 
 I cannot talk with civet in the room, 
 
 A fine puss gentleman that's all perfume. 
 
 COWPER. 
 
4 87 t 
 
 Physicians might (I believe), if they would, 
 extract greater utihty from odors, than they do; 
 for I have often observed, that they cause an 
 alteration in me, and work upon my spirits 
 according to their several virtues; which make 
 me approve of what I said, namely, that the use 
 of incense and perfumes in churches, so ancient 
 and so universally received in all nations, and 
 religions, was intended to cheer us, and to rouse 
 and purify the senses, the better to fit us for 
 contemplation. (Of Smells.) 
 
 He was himself peculiarly susceptible to 
 their influence. 
 
 'Tis not to be beheved, how strangely all 
 sorts of odors cleave to me, and how apt my 
 skin is to imbibe them. He that complains of 
 nature, that she has not furnished mankind 
 with a vehicle to convey smells to the nose, 
 had no reason; for they will do it themselves; 
 especially to me: my very mustachio's perform 
 that office; for if I stroke them but with my 
 gloves, or handkerchief, the smell will not out a 
 whole day: they will reproach me where I have 
 been. (Of Smells.) 
 
 He went far ahead of Osier in discrediting 
 the performance of the aged. 
 
 Of all great human actions I ever heard, or 
 read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, 
 
4 88 > 
 
 both in former ages, and our own, more per- 
 formed before the age of thirty, than after: 
 and oft-times in the very lives of the same men. 
 Sometimes the body first submits to age, 
 sometimes the soul, and I have seen enow, who 
 have got a weakness in their brains, before 
 either in their hams, or stomach: and by how 
 much the more it is a disease of no great pain to 
 the infected party, and of obscure symptoms, so 
 much greater the danger is. (Of Age.) 
 
 He was an apostle worthy to be classed 
 with the Venetian nobleman Cornaro, ^who 
 began to reform his ways at forty and was 
 rewarded with more than half a century of 
 health and happiness thereafter. 
 
 Health is a precious thing and the only one, 
 in truth, meriting that a man should lay out, 
 not only his time, sweat, labour and goods but 
 
 * Luigi Cornaro (1467-1566), a Venetian nobleman, 
 published four editions of a work on "The Temperate 
 Life." He had been subject to digestive disturbances 
 and gout for fifteen years, when at forty he took to 
 dieting and hygienic living. Until within a few years 
 of his death at ninety-eight he was able to write for 
 seven or eight hours a day, conversed with his 
 friends, attended concerts, etc. His first book was 
 written when he was eighty-three, the others when 
 he was eighty-six, ninety-one and ninety-five. The 
 later ones contain apologies for the juvenile crudities 
 of the earlier compositions! 
 
FRATELLI ALINARI, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 Portrait of Luigi Cornaro by Titian, Pitti Gallery, Florence. 
 
4 89 I- 
 
 also his life itself to obtain it forasmuch as with- 
 out it life itself is injurious to us. 
 
 Health, I say, the fairest and richest present 
 that nature can make us. (The Apology.) 
 
 For the greatest part of pleasures, (say they), 
 wheedle and caress, only to strangle us, hke 
 those thieves the Egyptians called PhiHste; 
 and if the headache should come before drunken- 
 ness, we should have a care of drinking too 
 much: but pleasure to deceive us, marches 
 before, and conceals her train. Books are 
 pleasant, but if by being over studious, we 
 impair our health, and spoil our good humor, 
 two of the best pieces we have, let us give it 
 over; for I for my part am one of those who 
 think, that no fruit derived from them, can 
 recompence so great a loss. As men who feel 
 themselves weakened by a long series of in- 
 disposition, give themselves up at last to the 
 mercy of medicine, and submit to certain rules 
 of living, which they are for the future never to 
 transgress; so he who retires, weary of, and dis- 
 gusted, with the common way of Hving, ought 
 to model this new one he enters into, by the 
 rules of reason, and to institute and establish 
 it by premeditation, and after the best method 
 he can contrive. (Of SoHtude.) 
 
 My chiefest care in choosing my lodgings, is 
 always to avoid a thick and foul air; and those 
 beautiful cities of Venice and Paris, have very 
 
4 90 !*■ 
 
 much lessened the kindness I had for them, the 
 one by the offensive smell of her marshes, and 
 the other of her dirt. (Of Smells). 
 
 Two centuries later Dickens, in a similar 
 vein, has a fling at Cologne. 
 
 Montaigne recognizes the existence of 
 remedies in nature. 
 
 I very well know there are some simples 
 that moisten and others that dry, I experiment- 
 ally know that radishes are windy and senna 
 leaves purging ... I very much honor that 
 glorious name (physic) and the end it is studied 
 for and what it promises to the service of man- 
 kind; but what it foists upon us I neither honor 
 nor can esteem. In the first place experience 
 makes me dread it; for amongst all my acquaint- 
 ance, I see no race of people so soon sick and so 
 long before they are well as those who take 
 much physic. 
 
 Here follows the charge that physicians 
 actually seek to corrupt health itself for 
 fear men should at any time escape their 
 authority. It is terrible but true. The doctor 
 who calls bronchitis, "pneumonia," indi- 
 gestion, an "ulcer of the stomach;" talks 
 of warding off a disease or accident that 
 
4 9^ l*" 
 
 would infallibly have supervened but for 
 his timely presence, who tells a patient he 
 was "threatened" with this or that awful 
 disease, may not be as common today as he 
 was in Montaigne's time but he is with us 
 still. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Montaigne's Attitude Toward 
 Medicine 
 
 Montaigne offers a historical retrospect to 
 show how medicine was looked down on in 
 Rome, adverts to strange practices among 
 various races and concludes with caustic 
 comment on the common practice of order- 
 ing violent purges. " I do not know whether 
 such evacuations be so much to our advan- 
 tage as they pretend . . . the violent grip- 
 ings and contest between the drug and the 
 disease is ever to our loss . . . Order a 
 purge for your brain, it will then be much 
 better employed than upon your stomach. 
 Physicians ascribe all favorable results to 
 what they ordered; the unfavorable ones are 
 explained by frivolous and idle reasons" — an 
 open window, sleeping on the left side or with 
 the arms out of bed. 
 
 On suggestion and deception he has some 
 apposite remarks. Physicians maintain that 
 "the most inexpert, ignorant physician is 
 more proper for a patient that has confi- 
 dence in him than the most learned and 
 experienced that he is not acquainted with. 
 M 
 
4 93 I"- 
 
 Nay even the very choice of most of their 
 drugs is in some sort mysterious and di- 
 vine." He cites articles of the prevalent 
 pharmacopeia — the left foot of a tortoise, 
 the urine of an elephant, the liver of a mole, 
 etc., "and for us who have the stone (so 
 scornfully they use us in our miseries) the 
 excrement of rats beaten to powder and 
 such like trash and fooleries which rather 
 carry a face of magical enchantment than 
 any solid science. I omit the odd number of 
 their pills, the appointment of certain days, 
 feasts of the year, the superstition of gather- 
 ing simples at certain hours." . . . "Who 
 ever saw one physician approve of another's 
 prescription without taking something away 
 or adding something to it?" 
 
 Montaigne knew his history of medicine 
 and points out the mistakes of physicians, 
 the discrepancies in their teachings from 
 Hippocrates and Herophilus^ to Argenterius^ 
 
 1 Herophilus, a brilliant anatomist of the Alexan- 
 drian period (fourth century a. d.) who divides 
 with Erasistratus the honor of originating practical 
 dissection of the human body. Herophilus described 
 the duodenum, prostate gland, retina, vitreous, 
 torcular, etc. 
 
 ^ Jean Argenterius, a Piedmontese physician of 
 high character who had the boldness to challenge 
 the authority of Galen. He died in 1572. 
 
4 94 I" 
 
 and Paracelsus.^ (The latter's dogmatism 
 and conceit are known to Montaigne.) "The 
 art of physic is not so resolved that we need 
 be without authority for what we do; it 
 changes according to the climates and the 
 moons, according to Fernel and L'Escale." 
 
 Small seal used by Large official seal. The arms are: 
 
 Montaigne in personal cor- On a field azure, ten trefoils or, faear- 
 
 respondence and in com- ing a lion's paw of the same, armed 
 
 munications to Henry iv. gules, per fesse. 
 
 (Of Experience.) How often do we see 
 physicians impute the death of their pa- 
 tients to one another. After a recent visi- 
 tation of the plague which "swept away an 
 
 ' Paracelsus, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus 
 Bombastus von Hohenheim (i 493-1 541), a Swiss 
 who attempted to revolutionize medicine and laid 
 the foundation of chemical pharmacology and thera- 
 peutics. He had a brilliant mind but was coarse 
 in character and a violent denunciator of his 
 contemporaries. 
 
4 95 t 
 infinite number of men" the "most famous 
 physician of all the country" published a 
 book confessing that blood-letting in that 
 disease was the cause of so many fatalities. 
 That the rational practice of medicine 
 is no easy matter he readily concedes. 
 
 If we but consider the occasions upon which 
 they usually ground the cause of our diseases, 
 they are so light and nice that I thence con- 
 clude a very little error in the dispensation of 
 their drugs may do a great deal of mischief. 
 Now if the mistake of a physician be so 
 dangerous we are but in a scurvy condition, 
 for it is almost impossible but he must often 
 fall into those mistakes: he had need of too 
 many parts, considerations and circumstances 
 rightly to level his design; he must know the sick 
 person's complexion, his temperament, his 
 humors, inclinations, actions, nay his very 
 thoughts and imaginations. He must be assured 
 of the externa' circumstances, of the nature of 
 the place, the quality of the air and season, the 
 situation of the planets and their influences: 
 he must know in the disease the causes, prognos- 
 tic, affections and critical days; in the drugs, the 
 weight, the power of working, the country, 
 figures, age and dispensation and he must know 
 how rightly to proportion and mix them to- 
 gether, to beget a just and perfect proposition. 
 
4 9^ f 
 
 wherein if there be the least error, if amongst so 
 many springs, there be but any one out of order, 
 'tis enough to destroy us. God knows of how 
 great difficulty most of these things are to be 
 understood. For (for example) how shall a physi- 
 cian find out the true sign of the disease, every 
 disease being capable of an infinite number of 
 indications? How many doubts and contro- 
 versies have they amongst themselves upon the 
 interpretation of urines? ... In the disease I 
 have had were there never so Httle difficulty in 
 the case I have never found three of one opinion, 
 which I instance because I love to introduce 
 examples wherein I am myself concerned. 
 
 Montaigne now cites instances of mis- 
 taken diagnosis where operation or autopsy 
 disclosed the error. One of these, "a bishop 
 who was my particular good friend," was 
 advised by Montaigne, on the statements 
 of the attendants to undergo operation. 
 "When he was dead and opened," the stone 
 was not in the bladder but in the kidney. 
 "They are least excusable for any error in 
 this disease by reason that it is in some 
 sort palpable: and 'tis by that that I con- 
 clude chirurgery to be much more certain 
 by reason that it sees and feels what it does 
 and so goes less upon conjecture whereas 
 
4 97 }" 
 
 the physicians have no speculum matricis 
 by which to discover our brains, lungs and 
 liver." A further menace to the patient hes 
 in the errors of the druggist. "And is not 
 the danger still more when the making up 
 of this medicine is intrusted to the skill 
 and fidelity of another, to whose mercy we 
 again abandon our lives?" He adverts now 
 to the need of specialties. Our physicians 
 "are not aware that he who provides for 
 all, provides for nothing, and that the 
 entire government of this Microcosm is 
 more than they are able to undertake." 
 To sum up these quotations and other 
 passages, we must conclude that Montaigne 
 was far from entertaining an ignorant and 
 superstitious prejudice against medicine 
 and its professors. On the contrary he 
 perhaps shows himself more enlightened, 
 dispassionate, reasonable and philosophic 
 in this connection than in any one of the 
 countless subjects over which his tireless 
 fancy roamed. Montaigne recognized, as 
 few of our bitter and shallow critics do, 
 the inherent difficulties of the art of healing, 
 the vastness of the field, its seriousness, 
 its dangers. He appreciated the confusion 
 which constantly arises through a general 
 
4 98 > 
 
 similarity of manifestations in acute dis- 
 orders; the need of precise methods of 
 diagnosis; the importance of concrete 
 physical findings. He admits that there are 
 ponderable substances that produce definite 
 reactions in the body and that they can 
 be utilized for man's good. He perceives 
 the way patients themselves contribute to 
 debase the art by submitting to any and 
 every measure that any person whatever 
 may recommend in their "violent and 
 indiscreet desire of a present cure." It is 
 pure cowardice that makes "belief so 
 pliable" and patients so acquiescent, the 
 dupes of impostors, of any one that will 
 promise a cure. He does not "much blame 
 them for making their advantage of our 
 folly, for most men do the same. Many 
 callings, both of greater and less dignity 
 than theirs, have no other foundation or 
 support than public abuse." Apparently 
 the sophistications and substitutions of the 
 compounder, intermediary between phy- 
 sician and patient, are not unknown to 
 Montaigne and he sees in their accidental 
 or wilful errors a further ground for 
 mistrusting the doctor. 
 
 Finally there is the fallibility of human 
 
4 99 In- 
 experience and its evaluation. "And after 
 the cure is performed how can he assure 
 himself that it was not because the disease 
 was arrived at its period or an eflPect of 
 chance? Or the operation of something else 
 that he had eaten, drunk or sucked. Or by 
 virtue of his grandmother's prayers?" He 
 realizes that a serious attempt to unravel 
 the secrets of nature must inevitably be one 
 of incredible difficulty. The subjects for 
 investigation, the phenomena observed are 
 so infinite in number that honest research 
 exhausts itself before a sufficient number 
 of experiments could be properly sorted, 
 classified, recorded, interpreted and verified. 
 There will be conflicting reports from 
 honest students. There will be many just 
 observations made by obscure men that 
 will not come to Kght. Looking back on 
 the history of medicine he finds but three 
 instances of investigators attempting really 
 scientific work. 
 
 It is from all this and not from the mis- 
 takes of his contemporaries and the foibles 
 of human nature in patient and physician 
 that Montaigne grows skeptical both 
 regarding the existing possibifity of success- 
 ful heahng and the future of medicine. 
 
4 100 Js- 
 
 Thus he has the wit to find a real ground 
 for distrusting it and naturally enough he 
 could not foresee how all the indispensable 
 assets of genuine therapy would one day 
 be realized in the host of laboratories where 
 countless plodders are seeking the truth; 
 in the practical study of disease in hospital 
 and cHnic. The microscope, the stethoscope, 
 the thermometer, the x-ray, and innumer- 
 able mechanical devices of common use 
 today were all. unknown. The spirit of 
 scientific research had not replaced specu- 
 lation and metaphysics in a realm where 
 action inspired by speculation was a 
 constant menace to the confiding. 
 
 And in spite of all that reason told him 
 on the one hand, Montaigne was still so 
 human, so reasonable, so open to conviction 
 that when he could no longer find solace 
 from the knowledge he possessed about 
 health and disease, he humbly submitted 
 to the ministration of such physicians as 
 he believed learned and eminent. He was 
 too clear-headed, too fair, in spite of all his 
 sweeping and just criticisms of the frater- 
 nity, to hold that there were not exceptional 
 men and exceptional results. "I honor 
 physicians not for necessity. . . but for 
 
4 lOI Js- 
 
 themselves having known many very good 
 men of that profession and most worthy 
 to be believed." He does not attack them 
 but their system, and what a wretched iron- 
 bound, self-satisfied, arrogant, vaunting, 
 ignorant and deadly system it was in his 
 day! "When I am sick I send for them, if 
 they be near, only to have their company 
 and see them as others do." And he obeys 
 their directions in so far as these harmonize 
 with his comfort, his experience and his 
 common sense. 
 
 I summon them when I am ill, if they happen 
 to be there at the right moment. They may 
 choose whether my soup shall be made of 
 hotch-potch vegetables or of lettuces, they 
 can order me white wine or claret; and so with 
 all other things that are merely indiflFerent to my 
 appetite. (Resemblance of Children to Parents.) 
 
 Montaigne frankly admits that he would 
 not dare to make so bold with the mysteries 
 of physic had he not the authority of Celsus* 
 
 ^Aurelius Cornelius Celsus, a Roman aristocrat 
 of the time of Tiberius, though not a physician, 
 wrote a classic work on medicine which is one of the 
 principal sources of our knowledge of the medicine 
 of antiquity. 
 
4 102 ]!• 
 
 and Pliny,* ascribing to the latter the acute 
 observation that when physicians are at a 
 loss what to do they send their patients 
 "some to vows and miracles others to the 
 hot baths and waters;" and one more 
 device, says Montaigne, is "to send us to 
 the better air of some other country." 
 
 ^ Pliny, "The Elder," the author of a voluminous 
 "Natural History," was a sort of universal genius 
 and for centuries the accepted authority on botany. 
 He was a bitter satirist of physicians. He was admiral 
 of the Roman fleet in Neapolitan waters at the time 
 of the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii, 
 79 A.D., and lost his life in attempting to rejoin his 
 ship after dining ashore. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 Montaigne as a Patient 
 
 The more we penetrate to Montaigne's 
 inmost spirit the more we feel that, were 
 he with us today, he would make an ideal 
 patient. His common sense, his patience, his 
 fortitude, his liberality, his keen perceptions, 
 his discrimination, his knowledge of human 
 nature and above all his willingness to 
 trust and confide where dispassionate ob- 
 servation seemed to justify it, would have 
 insured a free hand to the honest, methodic 
 internist, utilizing diagnostic devices and 
 remedies of proved merit. 
 
 A man may find those for his money that will 
 shift his pillow, and rub his feet, and will 
 trouble him no more than he would have them, 
 who will present him with an indifferent coun- 
 tenance, and suffer him to govern himself, and 
 to complain according to his own method ... I 
 have seen some, who have taken it ill when they 
 have been told that they looked well, and that 
 their pulse was temperate, contain their 
 smiles, because they betrayed a recovery, and 
 be angry at their health because it was not to 
 [103] 
 
4 104 I" 
 
 be lamented; and which is a great deal more, 
 they were not women neither. I describe my 
 infirmities, but such as they really are at most, 
 and avoid all expressions of ill prognostic and 
 composed exclamations. If not mirth, at least, 
 a temperate countenance in the standers by, 
 is proper in the presence of a wise sick man. He 
 does not quarrel with health, for seeing him- 
 self in a contrary condition. He is pleased to 
 contemplate it sound and entire in others, and 
 at least to enjoy it for company. He does not, 
 for feehng himself melt away, abandon all 
 thoughts of life, nor avoid to discourse of 
 ordinary and indifferent things. I will study sick- 
 ness while I am well; when it has seized me it 
 will make its impression real enough, without 
 the help of my imagination. We prepare our- 
 selves before hand for the journey we undertake 
 and resolve upon, we leave the appointment of 
 the hour when to take horse to the company, and 
 in their favor defer it. 
 
 The groans forced by the pain of the stone, 
 were grown so familiar to my people, that 
 nobody took any more notice of them . . . But 
 in these travels you may be surprised with sick- 
 ness in some wretched place where nothing can 
 be had to reHeve you ; I always carry most things 
 necessary about me; and besides, we cannot 
 evade fortune, if she once resolves to attack us. 
 I need nothing extraordinary when I am sick. 
 
4 105 I" 
 
 I will not be beholden to my Bolus to do that for 
 me which nature cannot. At the very beginning 
 of my fevers, and sicknesses that cast me down, 
 while entire, and but a little disorder in my 
 health, I reconcile myself to Almighty God by 
 the last Christian Offices, and find myself by so 
 doing less oppressed, and more easy, and have 
 got methinks so much the better of my disease. 
 And I have yet less need of a scrivener or 
 counsellor, than of a physician. To conclude the 
 account of my frail humors, I do confess, that 
 in my travel, I seldom come to my inn, but 
 that it comes into my mind to consider whether 
 I could there be sick, and dying at my ease; I 
 would be lodged in some convenient part of the 
 house, remote from all noise, ill scents, and 
 smoke. (Of Vanity.) 
 
 In his portrayal of his attitude to sickness 
 and his conduct under suffering he is at his 
 best. His observations should be read and 
 pondered by every doctor. 
 
 I think it to be more wholesome to eat more 
 leisurely and less and to eat oftener; but I 
 would have the value of appetite and hunger 
 done Justice to. I should take no pleasure to 
 be fed with three or four stinted repasts a day, 
 at fixed hours, after a medical manner; who 
 will assure me that, if I have a good appetite in 
 the morning, I shall have the same at supper? 
 
4 io6 Is- 
 
 Let us old fellows, especially, take the first 
 opportune time of eating and leave to almanac- 
 makers the hopes and prognostics. (Of 
 Experience.) 
 
 I have no custom that has not varied accord- 
 ing to accidents; but I only record those that 
 I have been best acquainted with, and that 
 hitherto have had the greatest possession of me. 
 My form of life is the same in sickness that it is 
 in health, the same bed, the same houses, the 
 same meat, and the same drink serve me in 
 both conditions ahke; I add nothing to them 
 but the moderation of more or less, according to 
 my strength and appetite. My health is to 
 maintain my wonted state without disturbance. 
 I see that sickness puts me off it on one side, and 
 if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will 
 put me oflF on the other; so that by fortune and 
 by art I am out of my way. I believe nothing 
 more certainly than, this that I cannot be 
 offended by the usage of things to which I have 
 been so long accustomed . . . You make a Ger- 
 man sick if you lay him upon a quilt, as you 
 do an ItaHan if you lay him upon a featherbed; 
 and a Frenchman without curtains or fire. A 
 Spanish stomach cannot hold out to eat as we 
 can, nor ours to drink hke the Swiss. (Of Ex- 
 perience). 
 
4 107 I" 
 
 And, without a force upon myself, cannot 
 sleep in the day time, nor eat between meals, 
 nor breakfast, nor go to bed, without a great 
 interval betwixt eating and sleeping, as of 
 three hours after supper; and never standing 
 upon my feet, nor endure my own sweat, nor 
 quench my thirst either with pure water or 
 wine, nor keep my head long bare, nor cut my 
 hair after dinner; and should be as uneasy 
 without my gloves, as without my shirt, or 
 without washing when I rise from table, or 
 out of my bed; and could not lie without a 
 canopy and curtains, as if they were necessary 
 things; I could dine without a tablecloth, but 
 not without a clean napkin, after the German 
 fashion, very incommodiously. I foul them more 
 than they, or the Italians do, and make but 
 little use either of spoon or fork' . . . Nature 
 
 '■ I observed a custom in all those Italian cities 
 and towns through the which I passed, that is not 
 used in any other country that I saw in my travels, 
 neither do I think that any other nation of Christen- 
 dom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian and 
 also most strangers that are commorant in Italy, do 
 always at their meals use a little fork when they 
 cut their meat. For while with their knife which 
 they hold in one hand they cut the meat out of the 
 dish, they fasten their fork which they hold in their 
 other hand upon the same dish, so that whatsoever 
 he be that sitting in the company of any others at 
 meal, should unadvisedly touch the dish of meat 
 with his fingers from which all at the table do cut. 
 
4 io8 !»• 
 
 has also on the other side, helped me to some of 
 hers, as no more to be able to endure two full 
 meals in one day, without overcharging my 
 stomach, nor a total abstinence from one of 
 those meals, without filling myself with wind, 
 drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite, 
 and finding great inconvenience in the evening 
 air. For of late years, in night marches, which 
 often happen to be all night long, after five or 
 six hours, my stomach begins to be quessie, 
 with a violent pain in my head, so that I always 
 vomit before the day can break. When others go 
 to breakfast, I go to sleep, and when I rise, 
 am as brisk and gay as before . . . And I am 
 
 he will give occasion of offence unto the company, 
 as having transgressed the laws of good manners, 
 in so much that for his error he shall be at the least 
 brow-beaten, if not reprehended in words. This 
 form of feeding I understand is generally used in all 
 places of Italy, their forks being for the most part 
 made of iron or steel, and some of silver, but those 
 are used only by gentlemen. The reason of this their 
 curiosity is, because the Italian cannot by any means 
 endure to have this dish touched with fingers, seeing 
 all men's fingers are not alike clean. Hereupon I 
 myself thought good to imitate the Italian fashion 
 by this forked cutting of meat, not only while I was 
 in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in 
 England since I came home: being once equipped for 
 that frequent using of my fork, by a certain learned 
 gentleman, a familiar friend of mine. Thomas 
 Coryat: Crudities. 
 
4 109 I" 
 sorry for several gentlemen, who through the 
 folly of their physicians, have in their youth and 
 health put themselves into consumptions . . . 
 A man should addict himself to the best rules, 
 but not enslave himself to them. Alteration, be 
 it what it will, does distemper and astonish. 
 Can any believe that chestnuts can hurt a 
 Perigourdin, or one of Lucca; or milk and cheese 
 the mountain people; men enjoy then not only 
 a new, but a contrary method of life, a change 
 that the more healthful could not endure. 
 Prescribe water to a Breton of threescore and 
 ten, shut a sea man up in a stove, and forbid a 
 Basque footman walking, they will deprive 
 them of motion, and, in the end of air and 
 light . . . Both well and sick, I have ever will- 
 ingly suffered myself to obey the appetites that 
 pressed upon me. I give great authority to my 
 propensions and desires. I do not love to cure 
 one disease by another. I hate remedies that 
 are more troublesome than the disease itself. 
 To be subject to the stone, and subject to 
 abstain from eating oysters, are two evils 
 instead of one. The disease torments us on the 
 one side, and the remedy on the other. Since we 
 are ever in danger of mistaking, let us rather 
 hazard, rather defer the discovery of the mis- 
 take till after pleasure . . . Acrimony and 
 quickness in sauces were pleasant to me when 
 young, but my stomach disliking them since. 
 
4 no |8- 
 
 my taste incontinently followed. Wine is hurt- 
 ful to sick people; and 'tis the first thing that my 
 mouth disrelishes when I am sick, and with an 
 invincible distaste. Whatever I take against my 
 liking, does me harm; and nothing hurts me 
 that I eat with appetite and dehght; I never 
 received harm by any action that was very 
 pleasant to me; and accordingly have made all 
 medicinal conclusions mightily give way to 
 my pleasure. Physicians do ordinarily submit 
 their rules to the violent longings that happen 
 to sick persons, with very good success ... I 
 am sorry when I am sick, that I have not some 
 longing that might give me the contentment of 
 satisfying it; all the rules of physic would 
 hardly be able to divert me; I do the same when 
 I am well. I have observed, that both in wounds 
 and sicknesses, speaking discomposes and hurts 
 me as much as any disorder I can commit. 
 (Of Experience.) 
 
 Montaigne, like most sufferers from gout, 
 was proud of his complaint. He viewed his 
 afflictions as to some extent incident to his 
 time of life — "the gout, the stone, indiges- 
 tion are all symptoms of long years as heat, 
 rains and winds of long voyages." (Of 
 Experience.) 
 
 We give here a facsimile of a note made 
 by Montaigne in regard to his brief sojourn 
 
Hmtiignc mis a U Bsstille 
 
 arris. ntlMC a^nf^Mftft U^^ ajtrJr^uM ». Ja/^-t 
 
 fyi/iinei' a. /i.ea.n L-^ y^thCTn eyCf/n, yoy OMyCy^u. 
 
 Account, in his own handwriting, of IVIontaigne's arrest 
 and incarceration in the Bastille. 
 
4 112 > 
 
 in the Bastille. This is found in a copy of 
 the "Ephenierides"of Beuther which appears 
 to have been used by the Montaignes 
 for entries of births, deaths, marriages, 
 etc., very much as the family Bible is used 
 among us today. 
 
 1558. Between three and four o'clock in the 
 afternoon, being lodged in the Faubourg St. 
 Germain at Paris and sick with a sort of gout 
 which had seized me for the first time just three 
 days before, I was made prisoner by the Cap- 
 tains and Citizens of Paris (it was during the 
 period that the king had been put out by 
 M. de Guise), conducted to the Bastille and given 
 to understand that it was at the instance of the 
 Duke of Elbeuf and by way of reprisal for the 
 case of a certain Norman gentleman, his kins- 
 man, that the King held a prisoner at Rouen. 
 The Queen Mother of the King apprised by 
 Mr. Binard, state secretary, of my imprison- 
 ment, obtained from M. de Guise, who was in 
 her good graces and from the Provost of the 
 Merchants to whom she sent word (M. de Vil- 
 lerey, state secretary, also exerting himself 
 strongly on my behalf) that about eight o'clock 
 of the same day a royal steward came to set me 
 free by virtue of a warrant from the aforesaid 
 Lord Duke and of the said Provost addressed to 
 
i 113 }" 
 
 the clerk, Captain, for the time being, of the 
 Bastille. 
 
 This occurred July 10. Montaigne's gout 
 was in the left foot and he was conducted 
 to the Bastille mounted on his own horse. 
 The queen was in council together with the 
 Duke of Guise at the time of the arrest and 
 learned of it through popular rumor. 
 
 He views his situation with a certain 
 complacency, forcing himself like a true 
 philosopher to recognize how even with 
 the stone he is better off than he might be 
 under some other aiHiction. 
 
 The stone has this privilege, that it carries 
 itself clean off. Whereas others always leave 
 behind them some impression and alteration, 
 that renders the body subject to some new 
 disease, and lend a hand to one another . . . 
 Since I have been troubled with the stone, I find 
 myself freed from all other accidents, much more 
 methinks than I was before, and have never 
 had any fever since. I argue, that the extreme 
 and frequent vomitings that I am subject to, 
 purge me: and on the other side, my nausities, 
 and the strange fasts I am forced to keep, 
 digest my present humors; and nature in those 
 stones voids whatever there is in me of super- 
 fluous and hurtful. Let them never tell me that 
 
4 114 I* 
 
 it is medicine too dear bought. For what avails 
 so many apozemes, caustics, incisions, sweats, 
 setons, diets, and so many other methods of cure; 
 which oft, by reason we are not able to undergo 
 their violence and importunity, bring us to our 
 graves: so that when I am ill, I look upon it as 
 physic, when well, for an absolute deliverance. 
 And here is another particular benefit of my 
 disease; which is, that it most plays its game by 
 itself, and lets me play mine, or else I only want 
 courage to do it; for in its greatest fury, I have 
 endured it ten hours together on horseback; 
 do but endure only, you need no other regiment. 
 The other diseases have more universal obliga- 
 tions, rack all our actions after another kind of 
 manner, disturb our whole order, and to their 
 consideration engage the whole state of life. 
 This only pinches the skin, it leaves the under- 
 standing and the will wholly at our own dispose, 
 as also the tongue, hands and feet. It rather 
 awakes than stupifies you ... I moreover 
 observe this particular convenience in it, that 
 it is a disease wherein we have little to guess at. 
 We are dispensed from the trouble into which 
 other diseases throw us, by the incertainty of 
 their causes, conditions and progress, a trouble 
 that is infinitely painful. We have no need of 
 consultations and doctoral interpretations, the 
 sense well enough informs us both what it is, 
 and where it is . . . If I find them worse to- 
 
4 115 I" 
 morrow, I will provide new remedies and appli- 
 cations. That this is true, I am come to that pass 
 or late, that the least motion forces pure blood 
 out of my reins: and what of that? I stir never- 
 theless as before, and ride after my hounds with 
 a juvenile ardour; and find that I have very 
 good satisfaction for an accident of that impor- 
 tance, when it costs me no more but a little 
 heaviness and uneasiness in that part. 'Tis some 
 great stone that wastes and consumes the sub- 
 stance of our kidneys, and of my life, which I, by 
 little and little, evacuate. Now if I feel anything 
 to rowl and stir, do not expect that I should 
 trouble myself to consult my pulse, thereby to put 
 myself upon some tormenting prevention. I shall 
 soon enough feel the pain, without making it 
 more and longer, by the disease of fear. Who 
 fears to suifer, does already suffer what he fears. 
 To which may be added, that the doubts and ig- 
 norance of those who take upon them to expound 
 the designs of nature and her internal progres- 
 sions, and the many false prognostics of their 
 art, ought to give us to understand, that her 
 ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown. 
 There is great uncertainty, variety and obscur- 
 ity, in what she either promises or threatens; 
 old age excepted, which is an undoubted sign of 
 the approach of death . . . There is nothing 
 that ought so much to be recommended to 
 youth, as activity and vigilance. Our life is 
 
4 ii6 Jf 
 
 nothing but motion: I move with great diffi- 
 culty and am slow in everything, whether in 
 rising, going to bed, or eating. Seven of the 
 clock in the morning is early for me: and where I 
 govern, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till 
 after six. I have formerly attributed the cause 
 of the fevers, and other diseases I have fallen 
 into, to the heaviness that long sleeping had 
 brought upon me, and have ever repented 
 my sleeping again in the morning . . . Sleeping 
 has taken up a great part of my life, and I yet 
 continue at the age I now am, to sleep eight or 
 nine hours together: I wean myself to my 
 advantage, from this propension to sloth, and 
 am evidently the better for so doing. I find the 
 change a little hard indeed, but in three days 
 'tis over, and see but few that live with less 
 sleep, when need requires; and that more con- 
 stantly exercise themselves, nor to whom long 
 journeys are less troublesome. (Of Experience.) 
 Example is a bright and universal mirror, and 
 in all sciences. If it be a delicious medicine take 
 it, 'tis always so much present good. I will 
 never stick at the name nor the color, if it be 
 pleasant and grateful to the palate; pleasure is 
 one of the chiefest kinds of profit. I have suf- 
 fered rheumatism, gouty defluxions, relaxations, 
 palpitations of the heart, megrims, and other 
 accidents, to grow old, and die in me a natural 
 death, which I have been rid of when I was 
 
4 117 I* 
 
 half fit to nourish and keep them. They are 
 sooner prevailed upon by courtesy than huffing; 
 we must patiently suffer the laws of our condi- 
 tion, we are born to grow old, to grow weak, and 
 to be sick in despite of all medicine. I see every- 
 where men tormented with the same disease 
 [as his] and am honored by the fellowship, 
 forasmuch as men of the best quality are most 
 frequently afflicted with it; 'tis a noble and 
 dignified disease. That of such as are pestered 
 with it, few have it to a less degree of pain, and 
 yet they are put to the trouble of a strict diet, 
 and the daily taking of nauseous drugs and 
 potions; whereas I owe my good intervals purely 
 to my good fortune. The fear of this disease, 
 says one, did formerly affright thee, when it was 
 unknown to thee; the cryings and roarings of 
 those that made it worse by their impatience, 
 begot a horror in thee. Consider this chastise- 
 ment, 'tis very easy in comparison of that of 
 others, and inflicted with a paternal tenderness : 
 do but observe how late it comes ... If thou 
 tellest me, that it is a dangerous and mortal 
 disease; what others are not? For 'tis a physical 
 cheat to except any, and to say, that they do not 
 go directly to death; what manner is it, if they 
 tend that way by accident, and if they easily 
 slide into the path that leads up to it. But thou 
 dost not die because thou art sick, thou diest 
 because thou art living. Death kills thee with- 
 
4 ii8 > 
 
 out the help of sickness: and in some, sickness 
 has deferred death, who have lived longer by 
 reason that they thought themselves always 
 dying. To which may be added, that as in 
 wounds, so in diseases, some are medicinal and 
 wholesome. The cholic is oft no less long lived 
 than you. We see men with whom it has con- 
 tinued from their infancy even to their extreme 
 old age, and if they had not broke company, 
 it would have afflicted them longer still; you 
 ofter kill it than it kills you: and though it 
 present you the image of approaching death, 
 were it not a good office to a man of such 
 an age, to put him in mind of his end? . . . 
 Common necessity will however presently call 
 thee away. Do but consider how artificially and 
 gently she puts thee out of taste with life, and 
 weans thee from the world; not forcing and 
 compelling thee with a tyrannical subjection, 
 like so many other infirmities which you see 
 old men afflicted withal, that hold them in 
 continual torment, and keep them in perpetual 
 and unintermitted pains and dolors; but by 
 advertisements and instructions at several 
 intervals, intermixing long pauses of repose, 
 as It were to give thee leave to meditate and 
 ruminate upon thy lesson at thy own ease and 
 leisure; to give thee means to judge aright, and 
 to assume the resolution of a man of courage, 
 she presents to thee the entire state of thy 
 
4 119 1*° 
 condition, both in good and evil, and one while a 
 very cheerful, and another an insupportable 
 life, in one and the same way. If thou embracest 
 not death, at least thou shakest hands with it 
 once a month; by which thou hast more cause 
 to hope that it will one day surprise thee with- 
 out warning. And that being so oft conducted 
 to the water-side, and thinking thyself to be 
 still upon the accustomed terms, thou and thy 
 confidence will at one time or another be un- 
 expectedly wafted over. A man cannot reason- 
 ably complain of diseases that fairly divide the 
 time with health. . . I never fail of finding 
 matter of consolation from some favorable 
 prognostic in my past experience. Custom also 
 makes me hope better for the time to come. 
 Oh! how much does health seem so much the 
 more pleasant to me after so near and contin- 
 uous sickness . . . The worst that I see in other 
 diseases is, that they are not so grievous in their 
 effect, as they are in their issue. A man is a 
 whole year in recovering, and all the while full 
 of weakness and fear. . . Before they have 
 unmuffled you of a handkerchief, and then of a 
 callot, before they allow you to walk abroad and 
 take the air, to drink wine, and eat melons, 'tis 
 odd you relapse into a few new distempers. (Of 
 Experience.) 
 
 My friends oft pity me before I feel the cause 
 in myself; my looking-glass does not fright me. 
 
•{ 120 > 
 
 for even in my youth, it has befallen me more 
 than once to have a scurvy complexion, and of 
 ill prognostic, without any great consequence; 
 insomuch, that the physicians, not finding any 
 cause within, answerable to that outward 
 alteration, attributed it to the mind, and some 
 secret passion that tormented me within; 
 but they were deceived. If my body would 
 govern itself as well according to my rule, as 
 my mind does, we should move a little more at 
 our ease. (Of Experience.) 
 
 I am of the opinion that this temperature of 
 my soul, has often raised my body from its 
 lapses ... I had a quartan ague four or five 
 months, that had made me look miserably ill; 
 my mind was always, if not calm, yet pleasant; 
 if the pain be without me, the weakness and 
 languor do not much afflict me; I see several 
 corporal faintings, that beget a horror in me 
 but to name, which yet I should less fear than a 
 thousand passions and agitations of mind that 
 I see in use. (Of Experience ) 
 
 But he can be cruelly sarcastic: 
 
 Thus the physician hes preaching to a poor 
 languishing patient to be cheerful, but he would 
 advise him a little more discreetly in bidding 
 him be well. (Of Vanity.) 
 
 Experience is properly upon its own dung- 
 hill in the subject of physic, where reason 
 
4 121 > 
 
 wholly gives it place . . . And Plato had reason 
 to say, that to be a right physician, it would be 
 necessary that he who would take it upon him, 
 should first himself have passed through all the 
 diseases he will pretend to cure, and through all 
 the accidents and circumstances whereof he 
 is to judge. For my part, I should put myself 
 into such hands: for the others but guide us like 
 him who paints the sea-rocks and ports upon 
 the cloth, and there makes a figure of a ship to 
 sail in all security; and put him to it in earnest, 
 he knows not at which end to begin. They make 
 such a description of our maladies, as a town- 
 crier does of a lost horse or dog, such a colour, 
 such a height, such an ear; but bring him to 
 him, and he knows him not for all that. God 
 grant that physic may one day give me some good 
 and visible relief, namely, when I shall cry out 
 in good earnest. (Of Experience.) 
 
 The arts that promise to keep our bodies and 
 souls in health, promise a great deal, but withal, 
 there is none that less keep their promise. 
 And in our times, those that make profession of 
 these arts amongst us, less manifest the effects 
 than any other sort of men. One may say of them 
 at the most, that they sell medicinal drugs, but 
 that they are physicians a man cannot say. 
 (Of Experience.) 
 
 If your physicians do not think it good for you 
 to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat such and such 
 
4 122 I*- 
 
 meats, never trouble yourself, I will find you 
 another that shall not be of his opinion ; the diver- 
 sity of physical arguments and opinions embraces 
 all sorts of methods. I saw a miserable sick person 
 panting and burning for thirst, that he might be 
 cured; and was afterwards laughed at by 
 another physician for his pains, who condemned 
 that advice as prejudicial to him: had he not 
 tormented himself to good purpose? A man of 
 that profession is lately dead of the stone, who 
 had made use of extreme abstinence to contend 
 with his disease. His fellow physicians said, 
 that on the contrary, this abstinence from drink 
 had dried his body up, and baked the gravel in 
 his kidneys. (Of Experience.) 
 
 Let us a Uttle permit nature to take her own 
 way; she better understands her own affairs than 
 we. But such a one died, and so shall you, if not 
 of that disease, of another. And how many have 
 not escaped dying, who have their physicians 
 always at their tails? (Of Experience.) 
 
 Like most people, like ordinary people, 
 Montaigne, at times, lets his subject run 
 away with him, says more than he means; 
 like many a disgruntled patient he exagger- 
 ates what he considers his just case against 
 the doctors. In truth it would be hard not 
 to justify any unfavorable comment as we 
 look back upon their practice. The "ordi- 
 
•f 123 1 
 
 nary method of cures is carried on at the 
 expense of life, they torment us with caus- 
 tics, incisions, and amputations of limbs, at 
 the same time interdicting ailments, and 
 exhausting our blood; one step farther and 
 we are cured indeed." (The Custom of the 
 Isle of Cea.) But he had not our vantage 
 ground and in many passages he affirms a 
 favorable disposition to the profession by 
 referring respectfully to its leaders. In his 
 travels he consulted them and in his notes he 
 refers to many eminent physicians. He 
 speaks of Paracelsus, of Sylvius,^ of Thomas 
 Simon of Toulouse, Felix Plater,^ Grynaeus 
 (or else his lawyer son), who wrote on medi- 
 cine and on mathematics. Paracelsus he 
 
 ''Jacques Dubois, called Sylvius, (1478- 1555), the 
 teacher of Vesalius in Paris. Narrow-minded and sel- 
 fish, he bitterly antagonized his pupil's achievements 
 in anatomy. Sylvius named many of the important 
 arteries, veins and muscles and had a high reputation 
 as teacher and physician. 
 
 ' The professors of physic were "Platirus who did 
 read upon his own practice and Stapanus who did 
 read Galen, De Deff. Sympt: and Bauchinus who did 
 read upon anatomy and the two first had each for 
 yearly stipend 150 gulden, 20 sacks of corn (I mean 
 wheat comonly called bread corn) and 10 sacks of 
 oats and the third had 100 dollars and 24 sacks of 
 corn." Fynes Moryson: Itinerary. 
 
4 124 > 
 
 seems to have sized up rather well as the 
 brilliant revolutionary who may be right 
 but scarcely commends himself as fully 
 reliable. "How long is it that physic has 
 been practiced in the world? 'Tis said that 
 a newcomer, called Paracelsus, changes and 
 overthrows the whole order of ancient rules, 
 and maintains that till now, it has been of 
 no other use but to kill men. I do believe 
 that he will easily make this good : but I do 
 not think it were wisdom to venture my life 
 in making trial of his own experience." 
 (The Apology.) Sylvius is "an excellent 
 physician of Paris" but we scarcely sub- 
 scribe to his quoted advice "lest the diges- 
 tive faculties of the stomach should grow 
 idle it were not amiss once a month to 
 rouse them by this excess," i.e. a drinking 
 bout. Montaigne himself was abstemious. 
 
 I cannot nevertheless understand, how a man 
 can extend the pleasure of drinking beyond 
 thirst, and to forgive in his imagination an 
 appetite artificial, and against nature. My 
 stomach would not proceed so far, it has enough 
 to do to deal with what it takes in for necessity. 
 My constitution is, not to care to drink, but 
 as it follows eating, and to wash down my meat, 
 and for that reason my last draught is always 
 
4 125 I* 
 
 the greatest: and seeing that in old age we have 
 our palates furred with phlegms, or depraved 
 by some other ill constitution, the wine tastes 
 better to us, as the pores are cleaner washed, 
 and laid more open. At least I seldom taste the 
 first glass well. (Of Drunkenness.) 
 
 Beer was the one drink that upset him. 
 
 I confess that, beer excepted, my appetite 
 accommodates its self indifferently to all sorts of 
 diet. (Of Education of Children.) 
 
 DOCTRINES ACCEPTED BY MONTAIGNE 
 
 He is after all but the man of his time 
 and accepts the cautery, the incision, the 
 value of bleeding; believes in the theory of 
 humors and many a doctrine long since 
 discredited or of doubtful justification such 
 as maternal impressions. 
 
 Magicians are no very good authority for me, 
 but we experimentally see, that women impart 
 the marks of their fancy to the children they 
 carry in their wombs; witness her that was 
 brought to bed of a Moor: and there was pre- 
 sented to Charles the Emperor, and king of 
 Bohemia, a girl from about Pisa, all over-rough 
 and covered with hair, whom her mother said 
 to be so conceived by reason of a picture of 
 St. John Baptist, that hung within the curtains 
 
4 126 > 
 
 of her bed. It is the same with beasts, witness 
 Jacob's ring-streaked and spotted goats,^ and 
 sheep, and the hares and partridges that the snow 
 turns white upon the mountains. (Force of 
 Imagination.) 
 
 And also in the subjects of which I treat, 
 viz. of our manners and motions, the testimonies 
 and instances I produce, how fabulous soever, 
 provided they are possible, serve as well as the 
 true; whether it has really happened or not, at 
 Rome or at Paris, to Peter or John, it is still 
 within the verge of possibility, and human 
 capacity, which serves me to good use, and sup- 
 pHes me with variety in the things I write. 
 (Force of Imagination.) 
 
 He credits the prevailing theory of 
 contagion. 
 
 And as an infected body communicates its 
 malady to those that approach, or Kve near it, 
 as we see in the plague, the smallpox, and sore 
 eyes that run through whole families and cities. 
 (Force of Imagination.) 
 
 On the other hand he seems to have some 
 notion of natural immunity. 
 
 And yet I have ever found myself very little 
 subject to epidemic diseases, that are caught 
 * Genesis xxx, 32-43. 
 
4 127 ]*■ 
 
 either by conversing with the sick, or bred by the 
 contagion of the air; I have very well escaped 
 from those of my time, of which there has been 
 several virulent sorts in our cities and armies. 
 (Of Smells.) 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 Montaigne The Traveler 
 
 In 1580 Montaigne, who had for some 
 time been troubled with gout and nephro- 
 lithiasis, and had made trial of various 
 French watering places, Cauterets, Eaux 
 Chaudes, etc., set out on an extended 
 journey through Germany, Switzerland and 
 Austria to Italy, hoping to find some relief 
 for his increasingly painful malady at the 
 principal objective point, the famed Baths 
 of Lucca, if not on the way thither. His 
 party^ included a person who combined 
 the functions of valet and secretary. The 
 commentators on Montaigne have naturally 
 rated the series of somewhat random notes 
 of travel, now written in the first person 
 and now as coming from another, now in 
 French, now in Italian, far below the 
 "Essays" and have even affirmed that the 
 
 1 Montaigne's party consisted of ten or twelve 
 persons including valets and lackeys. Only one of 
 the gentlemen made the entire journey with him. 
 One stayed behind in Padua, his brother was detained 
 in Rome by the consequences of a duel he fought 
 there, etc. Montaigne regulated the itinerary, length 
 of stops, etc. 
 
 [128] 
 
4 129 1" 
 
 notes do not disclose the author's person- 
 ality. The story of the journey^ has no 
 
 ^ The manuscript of Montaigne's travel diary 
 was found with other neglected papers, in a chest at 
 the Chateau Montaigne when an ecclesiastic named 
 Prunis went there to collect data for a history of 
 Perigord. This was one hundred and eighty years 
 after his death. Nothing had been known of the 
 journal before. Over one-third of the writing is in 
 Montaigne's hand and of this portion one-half is in 
 Italian. Books i and ii of the "Essays" were pub- 
 lished just before Montaigne started on his travels. 
 Book III was written after his return. 
 
 Two other notable travelers of this period whose 
 writings amply confirm many of Montaigne's obser- 
 vations were Fynes Moryson and Thomas Coryat. 
 
 Fynes Moryson was born in Lincolnshire in 1566, 
 two years after Shakespeare. His father was what 
 would be called today the Chief Registrar of the 
 Land Tax. After studying at Cambridge he went 
 abroad for the definite purpose of securing material 
 for a thesis on social conditions in Europe whereby 
 to obtain an m. a. degree from Oxford whose 
 reputation throughout Europe was at that time 
 greater than Cambridge's. He sailed from the mouth 
 of the Thames, May i, 1591, returning to London 
 on May 15, 1595. His second foreign sojourn lasted 
 about two years. Moryson died in 1630. The manu- 
 script of "The Itinerary" is in the library of Corpus 
 Christi College, Oxford. 
 
 Thomas Coryat was born in 1577 and went to the 
 Continent in 1608, where he traveled extensively, 
 always on foot. In 161 1 he published the account 
 of his journeyings under the title of "Coryat's 
 Crudities." 
 
4 130 > 
 
 moralizing but the casual comments on the 
 asperities of the road or the comfort of 
 a good inn are intensely interesting to those 
 who want to know all they can about 
 Montaigne, the man. One may be a true 
 philosopher when sitting at ease in the 
 seclusion of an inviolable library and yet 
 display a wholly different spirit when 
 settling accounts with a rapacious landlord, 
 bargaining for post-horses, harrassed by 
 guides or the petty officials at a frontier 
 custom house.^ Doubtless Montaigne some- 
 
 ' Customs exactions at the confines of each petty 
 state were very annoying. To substantiate this 
 statement the following quotation from Fynes 
 Moryson's "Itinerary" is apt. "The princes of 
 Italy above all others in the world impose not only 
 upon their subjects but upon all strangers passing 
 through their territories great and many tolls, cus- 
 toms and like exactions . . . Myself returning 
 from Padua towards England and having the testi- 
 mony of the University (vulgarly called matricula) 
 that I was a student thereof was thereby freed from 
 many small payments in that State, as six soldi 
 demanded at the gate of Padua, and eight soldi at 
 Verona and some quattrines for the passing of 
 bridges and the like . . I carried nothing 
 with me but some two or three shirts." "The searcher 
 followed us to our inn (at Ferrara), there to search 
 the small things we carried with us, and for this 
 office of respect that he did not stay us and search us 
 at the gate he extorted a reward from each one of us." 
 
i 131 > 
 
 times lost his temper while abroad — every- 
 one does — but most of his reproaches were 
 addressed to himself. 
 
 While he was traveling, Montaigne noted 
 with regret three steps which he had 
 neglected to take with regard to his journey. 
 One was that he had not taken with him a 
 cook, who might have learnt the particular 
 methods of foreign lands, and some day at 
 home have shown proof of his skill. The 
 next was that he had not engaged a German 
 valet, or joined himself to some gentleman 
 of the country, for he felt it very irksome 
 to be always at the mercy of a blockhead 
 of a guide; and the last was that, before 
 setting out, he had neither consulted those 
 books which might have pointed out to 
 him what rare and remarkable sights were 
 to be seen in every place, nor included 
 in his baggage a copy of Miinster (the 
 "Cosmographia" of Sebastian Miinster, one 
 of the earliest guide-books), "or some simi- 
 lar book." 
 
 All things considered, Montaigne's com- 
 plaints were few. He resented the barbaric 
 German arrogance and independence and 
 at Constance this gave him an excuse to 
 shift from the "Eagle" where he was badly 
 
4 132 > 
 
 lodged, to the " Pike," where we trusthefared 
 better; but in general he liked German food 
 and German inns and vastly preferred their 
 stoves to open fireplaces.* 
 
 Their custom of warming the houses by stoves 
 pleased us greatly, and none of our company 
 complained thereof; for, after you have taken in 
 a breath or two of the air which indeed may 
 seem strange on entering a room, you are sensi- 
 ble only of a soft and regular heat. M. de 
 Montaigne, who slept in a room with a stove, 
 was loud in its praises, saying that all night he 
 felt a pleasant moderate warmth. In warming 
 yourself you burn neither your face nor your 
 boots, and are free from the smoke of a 
 French fireplace. At home we put on our warm 
 furred dressing-gowns when we enter our apart- 
 ments, but here people appear in doublet 
 and bareheaded in the warm rooms, and put 
 on thick garments before going into the air. 
 . . . One of these [stoves] is of porcelain dark- 
 ened to the colour of bronze, and made in the 
 form of a group of large human figures, which, 
 being heated, warm the room. Moreover, there 
 are certain others, stationed close to the wall, 
 
 * I came into . . . high Germany . . there 
 is such frequent use of them in all those countries, 
 especially in winter, that I lay not in any house what- 
 soever, but it had a stove. Thomas Coryat: 
 Crudities. 
 
i 133 > 
 
 which give out water, this being brought to 
 them from the fountain in the court below. 
 This is a fine piece of work. 
 
 Their warm but light feather coverlets 
 were a source of huge comfort. He thought 
 the national boastfulness and quick temper 
 were offset by honesty. 
 
 A constant cause of trouble was the heat- 
 ing of his room. Charges for a fire were high 
 and even when the service was well paid for, 
 Montaigne's requirements in this particular 
 — he was a real Jrileux — seemed to cause 
 grumbling everywhere. He had a horror of 
 chilling from night air and the dew. "Ar- 
 rived at Rovere very late, after travelling 
 fifteen miles. Never until now did we jour- 
 ney in the dewfall, so carefully had we laid 
 out our time on the road." The most serious 
 grievance was the unsatisfactoriness of the 
 beds in the average hostelry. He advised 
 intending travelers to take their own mat- 
 tresses with them and yet at Rovigo he 
 notes that Italian mattresses are softer and 
 smoother than French ones. He resented 
 the absence at Bagni di Lucca of glass, even 
 of linen shutters in the windows when every 
 house in Switzerland, even the poorest, had 
 
i 134 > 
 
 glass windows. And there was no chimney 
 in his room! He mentions at least two hotels 
 as the worst in the country but his verdict 
 on Italian inns was that they were in general 
 good and often excellent. 
 
 There is something truly sublime in the 
 picture of this elderly invalid incessantly 
 tortured by acute pain, rising after a sleep- 
 less night to ride 18, 20 even 30 miles on 
 horseback, supported by only a feeble hope 
 of finding medical relief, but animated by 
 a consuming interest in the affairs of men 
 and in every novelty to be seen in a foreign 
 land. 
 
 If we cannot share his delight in every 
 sort of mechanical contrivance — ^the water- 
 works at Constance and Augsburg, the 
 concealed jeux d'eau in the gardens of 
 Italian noblemen,^ which sprayed unsuspect- 
 ing visitors, the provisions for drainage 
 near Lucca which aroused in him an almost 
 childish delight — we recognize his courage, 
 his heroism in finding distraction for himself 
 in such observations. As long as his lively 
 intellect was stimulated or his fancy grati- 
 
 ^ The Italians specially delight in gardens, con- 
 duits of fresh water, fountains and building of fair 
 palaces. Fynes Moryson: Itinerary. 
 
B 
 bjj 
 
 OQ 
 
 c 
 
 3 
 
 a 
 
 -a 
 a 
 
i '35 y 
 
 ficd by tijfr'vc thing-, hf; could forget himself. 
 It ha-, f^ccD I)\}]<-j:\cA that he has so few 
 remarks 1.0 make on the i/IorJe-^ of Italian 
 art or the marvelous monuments of antiq- 
 uity and that the most beautiful scenery 
 never drew from hirn suitable expressions 
 of praise; but th'rre i.s ample evidence that 
 he appreciated all this. There can be no 
 question that Montaigne enjoyed every- 
 thing enjoyable; but he was making notes 
 of a journey not writing a guidebook or a 
 diary, and scenery may have been too provoc- 
 ative of revery and introspection to be 
 altogether pleasant for a man in the throes 
 of an incurable disease. At all events he does 
 not dilate on his afflictions. They are men- 
 tioned as incidents of the day and no more, 
 often interlarderl between matters wholly 
 foreign to himself and relating to something 
 that happened fJays before. 
 
 If there was a single side of himself 
 which he did not throw open to the public 
 gaze it was the strictly emotional or senti- 
 mental side, liut Montaigne was not a 
 materialist, or beyond the reach of subtle 
 and mysterious influences, and he loved 
 
 b'-auty. 
 There is no heart so effeminate, that the 
 
4 136 > 
 
 rattle and sound of our drums and trumpets 
 will not enflame with courage; nor so sullen, that 
 the harmony of our music will not rouse and 
 cheer; nor so stubborn a soul, that will not 
 feel itself struck with some reverence, in con- 
 sidering the gloomy vastness of our churches, 
 the variety of ornaments, and order of our 
 ceremonies, and to hear the solemn music of 
 our organs, and the grace and devout harmony 
 of our voices. (The Apology.) 
 
 In a personal notebook of travel there 
 was certainly little occasion to rhapsodize 
 over things universally known. On the other 
 hand he is circumstantial about all that 
 was striking in out-of-the-way places. Of 
 the fountains at Bagnaia he says that the 
 architect has touched "the highest point 
 of art, beauty and grace." ^ He waxes 
 expansive over the superb country home of 
 the Farnese family at Caprarola.^ The por- 
 
 * The Villa Lante at Bagnaia belonged to the Dukes 
 of Lante. It was not finished at the time of Mon- 
 taigne's visit, though begun a hundred years before. 
 Viterbo and Bagnaia are connected with the tragic 
 story of Vittoria Accoramboni. 
 
 ' It was designed by Vignola for Cardinal Ales- 
 sandro Farnese, nephew of Paul in. The palace, 
 with beautiful internal decorations, is a pentagonal 
 building with five wings around a central court. 
 
u 
 
 fc 
 
 u 
 
4 137 !«• 
 trait of Pico della Mirandola^ which he saw 
 at Urbino is described in detail. His notes do 
 actually abound in appreciative allusions 
 to all natural beauty. He delays leaving 
 Ancona "to enjoy the beautiful prospect 
 of the town and its situation." The site 
 of Empoli is "most lovely." He was 
 charmed by the scenery along the Adriatic 
 coast. The vineyards and chestnut groves 
 that cover the hills of Tuscany gave him 
 keen delight. On the Sunday after getting 
 word of his call to the mayoralty of Bor- 
 deaux he took a ride along the heights of 
 Granaia and as he gazed on the country- 
 side stretched at his feet pronounced it "the 
 fairest and most fertile that the world could 
 show." He paid full tribute to the beauties 
 of the landscape near the famous falls of 
 Terni. Lucca, ^ of course, he loved and every- 
 
 * "Earle Joannes Picus of Mirandula in the Duchy 
 of Mantua," as Coryat calls him, "the mirrour of his 
 time and the Phoenix of Italy." Delia Porta, the 
 botanist, phrenologist, playwright, particularly 
 admired Pico's head. In connection with this por- 
 trait by an unknown painter it would be well to 
 remember that a portrait of Mirandula is the 
 only painting Montaigne refers to in his travels. 
 
 » Lucca, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves 
 and the villas Montaigne loved, played its full part 
 
4 138 1* 
 
 thing connected with it — city walls, palaces, 
 people. "I never saw a town in a more 
 pleasant site, surrounded as it is by a most 
 beautiful plain two leagues in extent, and 
 beyond this the lovely mountains and hills, 
 which for the most part are cultivated to 
 the tops." If he made the wonderful journey 
 over the Mont Cenis Pass without a word 
 about the grandeur of the scene we must 
 remember that he was making a forced 
 march in obedience to royal mandate, 
 doubtless absorbed in thoughts of the 
 duties he was about to assume, sick and 
 
 in that long struggle of the cities for autonomy which 
 is the salient feature of medieval Italian history. 
 As the birthplace of Giovanni Diodati, who trans- 
 lated the Bible into Italian, and as a focus along with 
 Mantua and Ferrara of a distinct Lutheran move- 
 ment it has a better title to lasting fame. Charles 
 V and Pope Paul in met for conference at Lucca 
 in 1542, the Emperor being a guest at the Diodati 
 Palace. It was during his visit that Giovanni was 
 born. In 1525 an edict was passed imposing a fine 
 of 50 ducats on any one introducing Lutheran books 
 into the city. In 1553 the Diodatis fled for their 
 lives because they had embraced the religious ideas 
 of the Reformation. Through their branch houses 
 in Lyons and Geneva the wealthy silk merchants of 
 Lucca had close relations with the intellectual and 
 religious movement in those cities and became deeply 
 tinctured with Lutheran ideas. Then, too, Peter 
 
4 139 t 
 suflFering, chilled by the wintry weather. 
 On the Puy de Dome he passed a stone. 
 "On Monday the 20th I started in the 
 morning, and on the heights of Puy de 
 Dome I passed a stone, somewhat broad 
 and flat. I had felt it all the morning and 
 even the day before with a slight pain in 
 the kidneys. It was neither very hard nor 
 very soft." 
 
 In everything that related to the resorts 
 visited and the use of their healing waters 
 he is most minute and particular, tefling 
 just what he was expected to do and what 
 he actually did. As a rational, highly intelli- 
 
 Martyr, who came there in 1541 and later was made 
 prior of San Frediano, was the son of an adherent 
 of Savonarola, a friend of men like Cusano, Valdez, 
 Carnesecchi. His expositions of the Gospels alarmed 
 his superiors but influence protected him at first and 
 he founded a school from which went forth men who 
 filled important pastorates or professorships in Italy 
 and Germany. Eventually he was driven from Italy. 
 The followers of the new religion who sought safety 
 in flight had their property confiscated. In 1562 
 the senate of Lucca forbade heretics to go to Spain, 
 France, Switzerland and the Low Countries for 
 refuge, and spies were sent out to make foreign 
 residence impossible for them. Protests came from 
 France and Switzerland but the fires of the Inqui- 
 sition destroyed the Lucchese Lutherans, root and 
 branch. 
 
4 140 J" 
 
 gent patient who had profited little by the 
 physicians but learned much by experience 
 regarding what was good for him and what 
 was not, he departed widely from conven- 
 tional practices, perhaps to his advantage 
 but certainly to the great astonishment of 
 his fellow sufferers. On the other hand, in all 
 his social relations while abroad Montaigne 
 prided himself on being very correct and 
 carefully conformed to local usage. He 
 is everywhere, and on all occasions, a gentle- 
 man, though mortified occasionally at not 
 getting the ceremonious reception he ex- 
 pected; disgusted at times by the bibulous- 
 ness of Germans and the arrogance that 
 developed with their potations; ashamed 
 (as who has not been) of the behavior of 
 some of his fellow countrymen abroad. 
 
 He tried to be simple, friendly, unob- 
 trusive, wherever he went. He did not dis- 
 play that blatant pride in home institutions 
 seen in the modern American, who con- 
 founds boastfulness with patriotism; he 
 avoided the insular aloofness of the English 
 traveler, ever fearful of embarrassing and 
 compromising consequences from making 
 chance acquaintances; he was not, despite 
 his passionate admiration for Paris, con- 
 
4 141 I" 
 
 vinced that it was the center of the intel- 
 lectual world nor that France was the only 
 model for all things good and beautiful.^" 
 
 At Padua and elsewhere^^ he notes how 
 many Frenchmen come to Italy to learn 
 fencing and horsemanship and cheerfully 
 concedes the superiority of the Italians in 
 these accomplishments and that Italian 
 horses are the most perfectly schooled of all. 
 His statement that more fine horses and 
 carriages are to be seen in Rome than in 
 any other city still holds true. 
 
 Eager everywhere to conform to local 
 customs he changes the hours of his repasts, 
 and in the spirit of St. Paul eats what is 
 set before him, only complaining when the 
 wine is sophisticated or new. To the son of a 
 ^"And you who have not been to Paris — go! 
 
 RUSKIN. 
 
 ^^ Fynes Moryson saw Neapolitan gentlemen 
 playing an equestrian game with a ball which they 
 knocked about with long-handled mallets — a form 
 of polo, doubtless. He says: "The Neapolitans are 
 excellent horsemen and much use that exercise. 
 And thereby excellent teachers to manage great 
 horses which they keep also of their own in stables 
 and yards fitted to the purpose. And Padua affordeth 
 also most skillful masters and teachers to fence. 
 So as the desire to learn these virtues and quahties 
 draws many native and foreign gentlemen to spend 
 some time in this university." Itinerary. 
 
4 142 I* 
 
 wine merchant, and much more to a sick 
 man, this was a matter of moment. It is 
 only because of his physical condition that 
 he makes so many references to food and 
 lodging. He was no gourmand, scarcely a 
 gourmet. He frequently went to bed supper- 
 less or had only a little toast, and habitually 
 started his all-day horseback rides sustained 
 only by a breakfast of bread and such fruit 
 as he could obtain by the roadside. " Reple- 
 tion hath in my case a cruelly sluggish effect 
 on activity." He is equally at home when 
 banqueting with a cardinaP^ or dancing with 
 peasants. He visits impartially the Pro- 
 testant church and the Catholic cathedral, 
 conversing ahke with Calvinist and Jesuit 
 to compare what they have to say and form 
 his own independent judgment. ^^ 
 
 I'' At a dinner given by the Cardinal de Sens all 
 the guests washed their hands before and after eating 
 and all had napkins. Montaigne was a guest at one 
 feast where many roast fowls were served, their plum- 
 age having been carefully restored to give them the 
 appearance of living birds. 
 
 ^'At Kempten Montaigne visited the (Catholic) 
 cathedral and on the same day went to the Lutheran 
 Church. At Augsburg he attended both Catholic 
 and Lutheran Churches. "We went (at Lindau) to 
 see the Catholic cathedral, built in 866, where all 
 things are as they have always been, and we saw 
 also the church served by the Lutheran ministers." 
 
4 143 > 
 
 Those of us who have lived abroad know 
 how easily the globe-trotter forgets the 
 restraints and standards of home and yields 
 to temptations grown insidious through the 
 piquancy of a foreign flavor. Montaigne had 
 an eye for the women. He loved a pretty 
 face and records his disappointment when 
 some town Uke Fano, famous for its beauti- 
 ful women, has only ugly ones to show him, 
 a good man of the place informing him that 
 the time for that had long gone by. Venice 
 too disappointed him in this respect. But 
 at Ancona, at any rate, he found the women 
 "for the most part good looking."" 
 
 The inevitable eff"ect of health on mental 
 outlook is clear to the reader though not 
 always patent to the author. We forgive 
 the harsh and disparaging tone with which 
 he refers to Florence when we discover that 
 he passed a stone while there and that his 
 bed was infested with vermin. What mental 
 complacency could be expected from a man 
 
 ^* According to Montaigne, "Fano is famous 
 beyond all other towns of Italy for its fair women 
 but all those we saw were very ugly indeed." In 
 Montaigne's time all highborn ladies in Italy wore 
 masks in public. Our traveler's observations must 
 have referred mainly to the looks of peasants. 
 
4 144 ¥ 
 
 who "passed 2 stones and a large amount of 
 gravel" even though "without perceiving 
 anything more than a slight pain in the 
 lower abdomen;" who was kept awake by 
 vermin and then did enough sight-seeing to 
 exhaust the most indefatigable modern. He 
 noted the Grand Duke's stables and me- 
 nagery; visited one of the Ducal palaces 
 where "certain men were engaged in coun- 
 terfeiting eastern jewels and working in 
 crystal, for this prince is somewhat given 
 to alchemy and the mechanic arts;" finally 
 he made the round of the churches. No 
 wonder he cries out "in this city no seemly 
 diversion was to be had, neither in arms nor 
 horsemanship nor letters." Yet the "Flor- 
 entine Academy" was founded in 1540 and 
 the year after this visit the Accademia della 
 Crusca^^ so that it must have boasted a few 
 choice spirits. 
 
 And there was Bianca Capello. Montaigne 
 dined with her and the Grand Duke.^^ "His 
 
 *^ So-called metaphorically of sifting bad words 
 from the good as bran is sifted from meal . . . and 
 this academy hath lately published a dictionary. 
 Fynes Moryson: Itinerary. 
 
 " Francis, Duke of Tuscany, had married Bianca 
 Capello two years before Montaigne's visit to 
 Florence. Bianca, the daughter of a rich Venetian 
 
FRATELLI ALINARI, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 Bronzino's portrait of Bianca Capello in the Pitti Gallery. 
 
i 145 > 
 
 wife was seated in the place of honour, and 
 the duke below her, then the sister-in-law 
 of the duchess, and then her brother the 
 husband of the aforesaid. According to the 
 Itahan taste the duchess is handsome, with 
 an agreeable and inspiring face, full bust, 
 and a bosom displaying itself as it may." 
 M. de Montaigne fully recognised in her 
 the charm by which she had been able to 
 "cajole this prince and to insure his devo- 
 tion for a long time." At a subsequent visit 
 he makes the amende honorable and admits 
 that he can see a reason for calling Florence 
 "the beautiful." It seems remarkable, but 
 we must believe him when he says that at 
 only two places in Italy was he annoyed by 
 vermin in his bed — Florence and Viterbo. 
 But Montaigne was wonderful in the way 
 he triumphed over the frailties of the body. 
 We note that the "Falcone," where he put 
 
 merchant, eloped with a young Florentine. In 
 Florence she soon attracted the notice of the duke 
 and gave him every encouragement. She lived at 
 court as his mistress until the husband was disposed 
 of. The duke's marriage was opposed by his brother, 
 the cardinal, who became the object of Bianca's 
 hate. She prepared poison for him but Francis took 
 it by mistake and died. Bianca then poisoned 
 herself. 
 10 
 
4 146 > 
 
 up in Pavia, was the worst in Italy. There 
 were no mattresses on the beds and a sep- 
 arate charge was made for firewood. But 
 even when suffering he could be fair. 
 "Susa is a large, populous town. I was here 
 taken with a violent pain in the right knee, 
 a pain which I had felt for several days, and 
 which went on from bad to worse. The 
 inns are better than in other parts of Italy; 
 good wine, bad bread, plenty to eat, such 
 is the rule everywhere in Savoy." His one 
 universal, sweeping condemnation is not 
 exactly a criminal charge. "In all Italy I 
 have never found a barber who could shave 
 me or cut my hair properly." Mark Twain 
 made the same complaint about France! 
 
 How well he realized the danger of having 
 judgment warped by feeling is shown in 
 the following passages. 
 
 It is certain that our apprehensions, our 
 judgment, and the faculties of the soul in 
 general, suffer according to the movements and 
 alterations of the body; which alterations are 
 continual. Are not our wits more spritely, our 
 memories more prompt and quick, and our 
 meditations more lively in health, than in sick- 
 ness? Do not joy and gayety make us receive 
 subjects that present themselves to our souls. 
 
4 147 I- 
 
 quite otherwise than care and melancholy? 
 Do you believe that Catullus his verses, or those 
 of Sappho please an old doting miser, as they do 
 a vigorous and amorous young man? . . . For 
 it is most certain that men's judgments are 
 sometimes more prone to condemnation, more 
 sharp and severe; and at others more facile, 
 easy, and inclined to excuse. He that carries 
 with him from his house the pain of the gout, 
 jealousy or theft by his man, having his whole 
 soul possessed with grief and anger, it is not to 
 be doubted but that his judgment will lean this 
 way . . . 'Tis not only fevers, debauches and 
 great accidents that overthrow our judgments; 
 the least things in the world will do it. We are 
 not to doubt, though we are not sensible of it, 
 but that if a continued fever can overwhelm 
 the soul, a tertian will in some proportionate 
 measure alter it. If an apoplexy can stupify, 
 and totally extinguish the sight of our under- 
 standing, we are not to doubt but that a great 
 cold will dazzle it. And consequently there is 
 hardly one single hour in a man's whole life, 
 wherein our judgment is in its due place and 
 right condition, our bodies being subject to so 
 many continual mutations, and stuffed with so 
 many several sorts of springs and devices, that 
 I believe physicians know how hard it is, but 
 that there must be always some one or other 
 out of order . . . Dare hardly to tell the vanity 
 
4 148 > 
 
 and weakness I find in myself . . . If health and 
 a fair day smile upon me, I am a very honest and 
 good natured mart, if a corn trouble my toe, I 
 am sullen, out of humor, and not to be seen. 
 The same pace of a horse seems to me one while 
 hard, and another easy, and the same way one 
 while shorter, and another more long: and the 
 same form, one while more, and another less 
 taking. (The Apology.) 
 
 Montaigne took a passionate delight in 
 travel. His secretary said: "I verily believe 
 that, if he had been alone with his own 
 following, M. de Montaigne would rather 
 have gone to Cracow or to Greece by land 
 than have turned towards Italy," whither 
 he was bound for his health. 
 
 He took great pleasure in his visits to strange 
 countries, finding therein forgetfulness of his age 
 and of his ill-health, but he could never win 
 over the rest of the company to this view, each 
 one of them being anxious to have done with 
 travel and to return. He was ever wont to say 
 that, after an uneasy night, he would rise eager 
 and lively when he remembered he was about to 
 sally forth to see some fresh town or district. 
 Never did I see him less subject to fatigue or 
 less querulous of his ailments; so full of spirit 
 both on the road and at his lodgings; so apprecia- 
 
4 149 !*■ 
 
 tive of everything he saw, and eager for conver- 
 sation with strangers, indeed I believe that his 
 habit drew off his thoughts from his infirmities. 
 When the others complained to him of his 
 practice of leading the party over indirect and 
 winding roads, often returning to the spot 
 whence they had set out (which he would often 
 do when he heard report of something worth 
 seeing, or when he saw reason for varying his 
 plan of travel), he would reply that, for his own 
 part, he never set forth for any place other than 
 that in which he might at present find himself; 
 and that it was impossible he should miss or go 
 aside from his route because this route always 
 lay where places unfamiHar to him were to be 
 seen; and that, provided he did not fare the 
 same road twice over, or see one place a second 
 time, he never considered that he had failed 
 one jot in his original purpose. As to Rome, 
 which other people might easily see, he was less 
 fain to visit it than other places, because it was 
 well known to every one, and moreover every 
 lackey was ready to give news of Florence and 
 Ferrara. He said that he seemed to be in like 
 case to one who reads some dehghtful story or 
 good book, and dreads to turn the last page. 
 The pleasure of travel was to him so keen, that 
 he hated the sight of the place where he ought 
 rightly to stop and rest; moreover, he devised 
 several projects of travelling exactly as the 
 
4 150 > 
 
 mood might seize him, supposing that he should 
 separate from his present companions. 
 
 If we follow Montaigne on his pilgrimage 
 we shall glean interesting information about 
 places and people and many an odd story 
 of medical import. He tells us that at 
 Vitry-Ie-Fran^ois a woman named Mary 
 had just been hanged for going about 
 disguised as a man, marrying, and resorting 
 to unlawful appliances in order to sustain 
 the part. Another Mary in this town, 
 distinguished as "Bearded Mary," passed 
 for a girl until in leaping a ditch "the 
 distinctive signs of manhood showed them- 
 selves." Pare recites the same story but 
 puts the age when the transformation 
 took place at fifteen instead of twenty-two 
 and says that when the youth went home 
 weeping and told his mother that "his 
 bowels had come out of his belly," the 
 doctors and surgeons were called in and 
 verified his true sex. Mary's name was 
 changed to Germain and male attire ordered 
 by the bishop. 
 
 A WELL-CONDUCTED HEALTH RESORT 
 
 Four leagues beyond Bar-Ie-Duc the first 
 interruption due to sickness occurred. "M. 
 
4 151 I* 
 
 de Montaigne was obliged to stop on 
 account of his colic, which also occasioned 
 him to abandon the desire he had formed 
 of seeing Toul, Metz, Nancy, Jouinville, 
 and St. Disier, towns scattered along this 
 route, in order to get as soon as possible 
 to Plommieres." At Plombieres, Montaigne 
 detected in one spring a taste of iron, in the 
 other a taste of alum. The patrons of the 
 place drank sparingly of the waters and 
 only after a purge, but bathed two or three 
 times a day. Some took their meals, were 
 cupped and even scarified while in the bath. 
 Our traveler excited comment by only 
 bathing every other day and at four in the 
 afternoon and by staying in only an hour; 
 but he drank copiously at seven in the 
 morning. When he bathed he went without 
 his supper. He notes that here people were 
 cured of pimples and ulcers. In marked 
 contrast to the earlier practices in the bath- 
 houses of central Europe, the proprieties 
 seem to have been rigidly observed. It was 
 "reckoned indecent for men to bathe naked 
 or with less clothing than a little jacket, 
 or for women to wear less than a chemise." 
 The strictest rules were in force forbidding 
 all "prostitutes and immodest women to 
 
4 152 > 
 
 enter the baths or to be found within five 
 hundred paces of the same under penalty 
 of a whipping at the four corners of the 
 town." Any householders receiving or con- 
 cealing such undesirable patrons were liable 
 to fine and imprisonment. 
 
 The same penalty will fall on those who shall 
 use any lascivious or immodest discourse to any 
 ladies, or damsels, or other women and girls who 
 may be visiting the baths, or touch them in a 
 manner unbecoming, or enter or quit the baths 
 in ribald fashion, contrary to pubhc decency. 
 And because by the boon of the baths afore- 
 named God and nature have afforded us cure 
 and relief in many cases, and because decent 
 cleanliness and purity are necessary in order 
 to keep off the many contagions and infections 
 which might well engender in such a place, it is 
 expressly commanded to the governor of these 
 baths to take the utmost care, and to inspect 
 the persons of those who frequent the same by 
 day and by night; to make them keep decency 
 and silence during the night, making no noise, 
 nor scandal, nor horse-play. And if any person 
 will not render obedience the governor shall 
 forthwith carry the affair before the magistrate, 
 so that an exemplary punishment may be given. 
 Beyond this it is prohibited to all persons coming 
 
4 153 !=• 
 
 from infected places to repair to Plommieres 
 under the pain of death. 
 
 Montaigne "found the water easy to 
 drink, and the effects of the same all he 
 could wish." 
 
 Appetite, digestion, and sleep were alike good, 
 and his general health suffered no injury from 
 these waters. On the sixth day he was seized 
 with a cohc, more violent than his ordinary 
 attacks, and with pain on the right side, where 
 he had never hitherto been troubled, save once 
 in the course of a very trifling attack at Arsac. 
 This seizure lasted four hours, and while it was 
 on him he felt plainly the working and the 
 movement of the stone in the urethra and the 
 lower part of the stomach. The first two days 
 he passed two small stones from the bladder, 
 and gravel occasionally afterwards. When he 
 left these baths he deemed that he had still in 
 his bladder both the stone of this attack of 
 colic, and certain other small ones of which he 
 had felt the downward passage. He judged the 
 qualities of these waters, with regard to his own 
 case, to be much the same as those of the high 
 spring, Banieres, where there is a bath. He 
 found the temperature of the bath very mild, 
 indeed, children of six months or a year old 
 are wont to sprawl about therein. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 Incidents of the Road 
 
 At Bale, Montaigne dined with Felix 
 Plater, the first physician to report a death 
 from status lymphaticus and to attempt a 
 serious working classification of diseases. 
 At the time of the visit. Plater was occupy- 
 ing a fine house he had built for himself, 
 painted and decorated in the French style. 
 Montaigne was interested in the book of 
 simples which he was making. Instead of 
 illustrations the specimens themselves were 
 inserted, glued to the pages with great care 
 and skill, to show leaves, fibres, etc. Some 
 of them had been prepared as much as 
 twenty years before. Both in Plater's house 
 and in the public school of the city there 
 were several complete human skeletons. 
 
 Our next quotation is characteristic of 
 the notes, several items of widely diff"erent 
 nature being embodied in one illuminating 
 paragraph : 
 
 Certain of the people lamented to M. de 
 Montaigne over the dissolute carriage of the 
 women, and the prevalent drunkenness of the 
 
 [154] 
 
i ^55 > 
 city. We witnessed an operation for rupture 
 done by a surgeon on the child of a poor man, 
 who was very roughly handled by the operator, 
 and hkewise saw the very fine public library 
 overlooking the river in a pleasant situation. 
 
 Baden^ must have been extremely popular. 
 The hotel where Montaigne put up lodged 
 175 persons and by means of its 1 1 kitchens 
 fed 300 every day. 
 
 Ladies who are fain to take their bath with 
 daintiness and decency can repair to Baden with 
 confidence, for they will be alone in the bath, 
 which is Hke an elegant cabinet, light, with 
 glazed windows, painted panelling, and clean 
 flooring. Everywhere are chairs and small tables 
 for reading or gaming while in the bath. The 
 bather may empty and fill the bath as often as 
 he hkes, and will find a chamber adjoining . . . 
 
 The water when drunk tastes rather flat and 
 soft, like water heated up, and there is a smell 
 of sulphur about it, and a certain prickling 
 flavour of salt. Amongst the people of the place 
 it is chiefly used in the bath, in which they sub- 
 ject themselves also to cupping and bleeding, so 
 that I have at times seen the water in the two 
 
 1 In the vicinity of Baden interesting remains of a 
 Roman military hospital of the Imperial Era have 
 been unearthed. 
 
4 156 I" 
 
 public baths the colour of blood. Those who 
 drink it by habit take a glass or two at the most. 
 The guests as a rule stay six or seven weeks, 
 and some or other frequent the baths all through 
 the summer. No country sends so many visi- 
 tors as Germany, from whence come great 
 crowds . . . The water is less clear than that 
 of the other springs we have seen, and when 
 drawn from the spring it shows certain minute 
 fibers. Moreover, it contains no sparkling bub- 
 bles like other sulphurous waters when the 
 glass is filled . . . 
 
 M. de Montaigne took some of it on the 
 Monday morning after we arrived, seven small 
 glasses, and on the next day five large glasses, 
 amounting to ten of the aforesaid. On this same 
 day, Tuesday, at nine in the morning, while the 
 others were at table, he took a bath and fell 
 into a heavy sweat in bed afterwards, having 
 stayed in the bath only half an hour. The people 
 of the country, who stay all day in the bath 
 playing and drinking, stand only up to the 
 middle in water, but M. de Montaigne lay full 
 length and was covered to the neck ... On 
 the Thursday M. de Montaigne drank the 
 same quantity of water, which acted well and 
 rid him of a small amount of gravel. Still, he 
 found these waters more powerful than any 
 others which he had ever tried — whether from 
 the strength of the water itself or from the 
 
i 157 > 
 
 present habit of his body — and accordingly he 
 drank them more sparingly. 
 
 On Friday, October 7th, at seven in the morn- 
 ing, after breakfast, we quitted Baden; and, 
 before we set out, M. de Montaigne drank the 
 same quantity of the water as he had taken on 
 five previous occasions. With regard to the 
 operation of the same, concerning which he was 
 more sanguine than he was in the case of any 
 other bath he had visited (both as to the bathing 
 and the drinking), he was free in his praises of 
 these baths beyond all the rest, not only because 
 the place itself, and the baths and the private 
 apartments, are comfortably and conveniently 
 managed, but also because in all apartments, 
 visitors are always able to go to their own rooms 
 without passing through the rooms of other 
 people. Moreover, persons of small means may 
 find quarters to suit them quite as easily as 
 those who are rich. 
 
 Journeying along, Montaigne remarks 
 that "there are many lepers in this country, 
 the highways being full of them." The 
 secretary records that, at Lindau : 
 
 M. de Montaigne made trial of the feather 
 coverlets, such as they use in bed, and was full 
 of praise thereof, finding them light and warm 
 at the same time. It was a saying of his that 
 people of fastidious taste had more occasion to 
 
4 158 > 
 
 complain, when travelling, oftheir bed furniture 
 than of aught else, and he commended those who 
 carried a mattress or curtains amongst the bag- 
 gage when visiting strange countries. 
 
 At Stertzing, in the Tyrol, the secretary 
 relates that — 
 
 M. de Montaigne suffered this night from 
 cohc for two or three hours, and very sharply, to 
 judge from what he said next morning. Then 
 indeed, when he rose from bed, he passed a 
 stone of medium size which crunjbled easily: 
 outside it was yellowish, and when broken 
 showed white in the middle. He had taken cold 
 the previous day and found himself ailing, but 
 he had not suffered from colic since Plommieres. 
 This seizure partially removed the fear he felt 
 that at Plommieres some gravel had descended 
 into the bladder without passing therefrom, and 
 that certain matter, there arrested, was col- 
 lecting and consolidating. Now, seeing what 
 had happened, he felt he might reasonably infer 
 that, if there were indeed other particles, they 
 would have joined themselves to the stone he 
 had just passed. On the way he complained of 
 pain in his loins, and now he declared he had 
 prolonged the day's journey simply on this 
 account, deeming that he would find greater 
 ease on horseback than elsewhere. At this place 
 he called for the schoolmaster to converse with 
 
4 159 I* 
 him in Latin, but the fellow was a fool from whom 
 he could get no information as to the country. 
 
 Reaching Verona he had to show the bill 
 of health^ issued to the party at Trent. "Not 
 that there was any talk of danger of the 
 plague, but this is always done by custom 
 or by way of tricking wayfarers out of a 
 few coins." Montaigne visited the various 
 churches but saw nothing worthy of note 
 "either in the ornaments or in the beauty 
 of the women present," but did observe 
 "where the Germans have left divers marks 
 of their presence." 
 
 From Verona he rode 30 miles at a stretch, 
 a rather unusual day's march, to Vicenza 
 where he visited the house of the Jesuits 
 and "saw their store of distilled water, for 
 the sale of which they keep a shop . . . 
 They make, likewise, medicinal draughts for 
 
 ^ Thomas Coryat says that he would never have 
 found lodging within the city of Lyons had he not, 
 after much questioning, been given a little ticket at 
 the city gate. In Lyons he procured a health certifi- 
 cate as it was useless to start for Italy unless so 
 provided. The Venetians were the greatest sticklers 
 for such papers, but in most of the cities of Italy 
 it was demanded that new arrivals give proof that 
 they were in sound health at the last place visited. 
 
4 i6o I*- 
 
 all sorts of maladies." Here begin the com- 
 plaints about wine. His secretary says: 
 
 At this place we failed to get old wine, which 
 troubled me greatly on account of M. de Mon- 
 taigne's colic; for he had to drink thick wine 
 instead of the good wine we had got up to this 
 time. We thought of the German wines with 
 regret, though they are for the most part 
 spiced and diverse in their odour, and though 
 they have a liquorish flavour Kke sage; indeed, 
 they call one of them vin de sauge, which is 
 pleasant enough when the palate is wonted 
 thereto, seeing that it is also good and generous. 
 
 Further on, at Ferrara, the wine was 
 both thick and new, a combination of abom- 
 inations which made Montaigne appre- 
 hensive of an attack of colic. The Italians 
 have always been noted for taking less 
 pains with their wines than the French or 
 Germans but sophistication was not pecu- 
 liar to them. The prejudice against new wine 
 is at least as old as the " Regimen Sanitatis." 
 {Vinum sit clarumque vetus, subtile, ma- 
 turum.) During the vintage in Italy those 
 who have toiled in the vineyards and at the 
 presses may have all the new wine they wish 
 to ask for and advice against it without the 
 
4 i6i > 
 
 asking. On the second visit to Florence, 
 
 Montaigne observes : 
 
 They have a fashion here of putting ice in 
 the wine-cups, but of this I took very Uttle, 
 being uneasy in my body and troubled with 
 pain in the side, besides passing an incredible 
 quantity of gravel. My head still troubled me, 
 and I could not get rid of the sensation of dulness 
 and a certain indefinable heaviness over the 
 brow, the cheeks, the teeth, the nose, and all 
 parts. I imagined this discomfort arose, from 
 drinking the sweet, heady wines of the country, 
 because my headache returned after I had drunk 
 heartily of the Trebisiano. I must have been 
 inflamed through travelling in the summer heat, 
 and it needed a great quantity of the wine to 
 quench my thirst on account of its sweetness'. . . 
 
 ' Thomas Coryat was made sick by drinking the 
 sweet wines of Piedmont undiluted and urges his 
 readers to put water in their wine when abroad. 
 Coryat appears to have been easily upset by wine. 
 His second journey took him to India where he 
 finally died as the result of well intentioned hospi- 
 tality at the hands of fellow-countrymen who gave 
 him sack brought from England, he calling for it as 
 soon as he heard the drink mentioned. "'Sack, Sack! 
 is there such thing as Sack? I pray give me some 
 Sack' and drinking of it, though I conceive moder- 
 ately (for he was a very temperate man) it increased 
 his flux which he had then upon him and this caused 
 him within a few days ... to come to his journey's 
 11 
 
4 1 62 ]»• 
 
 At Urbino the wine was adulterated. At 
 Carrara it was treated with white of egg 
 and clarified so as to look like old wine but 
 by this process it merely acquired an 
 unnatural taste. The wines of Lucca were 
 passable, strong and well matured but not 
 very palatable. At the Baths the white 
 wines were sour and crude. 
 
 Montaigne hated adulteration of all 
 kinds. At the Baths of Lucca he discovered 
 that even the mineral water was being 
 fraudulently disposed of. 
 
 I made to the deputy-judge a suggestion, 
 which I deemed only reasonable, that the 
 government should make certain regulations — 
 of which I gave him an example, easy to carry 
 out, and admirably fitted for the end in view — 
 to be enforced with regard to the vast crowd of 
 traders who resort hither to carry away the 
 water of these springs into all parts of Italy. 
 These regulations would oblige them to show a 
 voucher for the genuine character of the water 
 they retail, and thus put an end to knavery, an 
 instance of which I gave him from my own 
 experience. 
 
 end." Coryat's death is thus described by his friend 
 and contemporary the Rev. Edward Terry, Chaplain 
 to the Right Honorable Sir Thomas Rowe, Lord 
 Ambassador of Great Britain to the Great Mogul. 
 
4 163 > 
 
 As we discover how constantly the pleas- 
 ures of travel were interfered with by recur- 
 rences of pain and suffering, we come to 
 understand more clearly why Montaigne 
 has so much to say about food and lodging 
 on the road. His diet was naturally a 
 matter of the greatest importance. In 
 this light many of his strictures upon 
 native inns and customs make it clear 
 that Montaigne tried to be broad and just 
 in his estimates. The sophistication of 
 wine appears to have been carried on as a 
 fine art even in Montaigne's day. He says: 
 
 I was forced here to drink new wine, as no 
 other is to be had in these parts. By storing it in 
 casks made of a certain wood, and by treating 
 it with the white of eggs, they clarify it so that it 
 looks like old wine, but it has a taste which is not 
 natural. 
 
 I suspect that the apothecaries here, instead 
 of fetching this water from Pistoia, where it is 
 said to rise, make an imitation thereof out of 
 ordinary water, for I found it had, in addition to 
 its saltness, a very strange flavour. 
 
 Whether Montaigne tried the mud baths 
 at St. Eleana is not stated. His description 
 of them follows : 
 
4 164 I" 
 
 There are also rooms for dry heat, made in 
 various fashions, but mud baths are what they 
 chiefly use. This treatment is practised in a 
 large bath below the bath-house and open to 
 the sky, fitted with a machine by which the mud 
 is pumped up to the house adjacent. Here are 
 provided divers appliances of wood made to fit 
 each limb — legs, arms, thighs and other parts — 
 wherein the member to be treated is placed and 
 the appliance filled with mud, which is renewed 
 as often as is needed. 
 
 At Ferrara we get evidence of the police 
 surveillance of houses of public entertain- 
 ment. "On the door of every room in the 
 inn is an inscription, 'Ricordati delta boletta,' 
 [remember your passport] and immediately 
 a stranger arrives he must needs send his 
 name and the number of his attendants to 
 the magistrate, who will then give orders for 
 lodgment, but if this be not done no one 
 will take them in." At Epinal the party had 
 been refused admission to the "pretty little 
 town" because of passing through Neuf- 
 castel, "where the plague was not long 
 since." Here the party had been annoyed 
 by a long delay at the city gate on account 
 of the required manifest and bill of health. 
 
i 165 > 
 
 Such papers seem to have been in demand 
 in most of the towns visited. 
 
 At Bologna Montaigne found much to 
 interest him and notes that among the 
 Frenchmen who had come there to learn 
 horsemanship and fencing the best pupil 
 with the foils was a youth from Bordeaux. 
 (At Padua he had found a hundred French- 
 men learning to fence and it annoyed him 
 to find Rome literally thronged with his 
 compatriots.) The pleasure of the stay was 
 marred, however, by indisposition. 
 
 On the Saturday after dinner we saw a play 
 by the comedians, with which M. de Montaigne 
 was highly pleased, but from this, or some other 
 cause, he was troubled afterwards with head- 
 ache, a distemper which had not molested him 
 for several years, but it passed away during the 
 night. Moreover at this time he professed to be 
 freer of pain in the kidneys than for a long while, 
 and rejoiced in digestive powers as sane as when 
 he returned from Banieres. 
 
 Going on by way of Florence [vide supra], 
 he came to Siena after a long stage, the 
 longest recorded in the notes. To ride 
 thirty-two miles after what he had been 
 through seems temerity itself, but Mont- 
 aigne held fast to the opinion that riding 
 
4 1 66 I^" 
 
 did him no harm and the constant change 
 of scene and the charm of the road afforded 
 him unfaiKng distraction from sad thoughts. 
 He put up at the "Crown," a tavern still 
 standing in 1852. There was no glass or 
 even Hnen in the windows and this made 
 Montaigne very anxious as he feared the 
 night air. 
 
 VISITS TO ROME 
 
 On the last stage of the journey to Rome 
 he started three hours before sunrise to 
 traverse the Roman Campagna by day- 
 light, a prudent measure as far as malaria 
 was concerned, but inspired by the feeling 
 that the cold air of the morning was hurt- 
 ful to his stomach. He was "ill at ease till 
 the sun came up." A ride of thirty miles 
 brought him to the city gate where there 
 were the usual difficulties over the quaran- 
 tine because he had passed through regions 
 where the plague was raging. Montaigne 
 repaired at once to the "Bear" at the 
 corner of the Via di Monte Brianzo and 
 the Via dell' Orso. This building, one of the 
 few remaining medieval houses of the 
 plainer sort, was still standing in 1870. 
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4 167 I' 
 
 no ground for the popular belief that it 
 had been patronized by Dante. In a day 
 or two he removed to lodgings in the Via 
 di Monte Brianzo. It is the scribe who 
 regrets they did not go to the "Golden 
 Bowl" instead, where they could have 
 enjoyed regal surroundings for the same 
 price. Montaigne avoided it just because of 
 the furnishings of silk and cloth of gold. 
 Gregorovius gives some interesting data 
 about Roman hostelries. They centered 
 mainly around the Campo di Fiore where the 
 windows were available for witnessing the 
 public executions which took place here. 
 Montaigne went to see the execution of a 
 noted malefactor and in this connection 
 mentions the practice in vogue of reviving 
 people who had been tortured by applying 
 the warm bodies of fowls just killed to flesh 
 torn with pincers, or to the stumps of muti- 
 lated limbs.* He tells how a few years before, 
 some of the numerous Spanish or Portu- 
 guese residents in the city had associated 
 themselves together for indulgence in cer- 
 tain immoral practices and that nine or ten 
 
 * In his "Diary" Samuel Pepys alludes to the use 
 of similar treatment for the drowned, "and they 
 did lay pigeons to his feet." 
 
4 1 68 > 
 
 of them were detected and sent to the stake. 
 One of the popular inns, the "Cow," had 
 belonged to Vannozza de' Catanei, mistress 
 of Pope Alexander vi. She also owned the 
 "Lion" very near Montaigne's inn. The 
 "Bear" was hard by the Piazza Fiammetta 
 where Caesar Borgia's mistress had had her 
 abode, and near the church where she was 
 buried as an honesta mulier. We cannot 
 ascribe to the jaundiced eye of a sick man 
 (during his two stays in the Eternal City 
 Montaigne passed six or seven calculi and 
 considerable gravel and had numerous at- 
 tacks of colic) the comments on the insig- 
 nificant character of the Roman streets for 
 they retained it down to our own day. The 
 "Bear" was on the left bank of the Tiber 
 and behind it was a congerie of narrow, 
 unlit, ill-smelling streets^ worse than those of 
 Paris before the time of Baron Haussmann. 
 Montaigne found much to entertain and 
 interest him. Many of his notes have a 
 bearing on things medical. The Pope, 
 
 5 The permanent architectural characteristics of 
 modern Rome date largely from the reign of Sixtus 
 V, '^successor of Gregory xiii. 
 
R. MOSCIONI, ROME, ITALY 
 
 The Inn of the Be.ir, Rome. 
 
 ..i.!l 
 
4 169 ]*■ 
 
 Gregory xiii,^ then over eighty years old, 
 he described as the most healthy and vigor- 
 ous man possible for his years, troubled 
 "neither with gout, colic, nor stomach com- 
 plaints of any kind." 
 
 He saw a priest's attempt at exorcism in 
 the case of a man possessed, melancholic 
 and in a trance. The attendant had a 
 napkin tied around his neck, and held him 
 fast. When cured he turned him over to his 
 friends and ordered him taken home. The 
 priest explained to Montaigne that the 
 devil to be driven out was a very obstinate 
 one and that it would be a hard job. Only 
 the day before he had relieved a woman of the 
 devil — an unusually large one who, as he 
 
 * Ugo Buoncompagno of Bologna, by whose order 
 the Julian calendar was reformed in conformity 
 with the plans of Luigi Lilio Ghirardi, a physician 
 of Verona. This work was largely carried on in the 
 CoIIegio Romano founded by Gregory xiii. There 
 in later years the great microscopist Athanasius 
 Kircher studied and taught. Gregory xiii ex- 
 hausted the papal treasury by his liberal benefac- 
 tions and to recoup was forced to confiscate many 
 of the Roman estates. He had a medal struck to 
 commemorate the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew 
 as a signal triumph of the Church, but wept on 
 learning the horrible details of the slaughter. 
 
4 1 70 ]»• 
 
 came out, made her vomit nails and pins 
 and a bit of the devil's hairy skin. 
 
 On the 1 6th of March, after our return to 
 Rome, I was taken to make trial of the Roman 
 hot baths at St. Mark's, which have the best 
 repute. I underwent a treatment of moderate 
 strength, and, though I went alone, met with all 
 possible respect. The usual custom is to take a 
 lady as companion, who hke yourself will be 
 rubbed by the men in attendance. I learned 
 here the composition of the unguent used for 
 removing hair from the skin. It is made of two 
 parts of quick hme and one of arsenic, blended 
 with lye, and will have effect in less than a 
 quarter of an hour after apphcation. On the 
 17th I was troubled, not insupportably, with 
 cohc for five or six hours, and afterwards passed 
 a large stone the shape of a pine kernel. 
 
 On March 13th an old Antiochan patriarch, 
 an Arabian, and well versed in five or six of the 
 languages of those regions, and quite ignorant 
 of Greek or of the other tongues we use, a 
 personage with whom I had become very inti- 
 mate, gave me a certain compound for the rehef 
 of my gravel, and written directions for the em- 
 ployment of the same. He bestowed it for me in 
 a httle earthen pot, where I might keep it ten 
 or even twenty years, and assured me that I 
 might anticipate a complete cure of my dis- 
 
4 1 71 t 
 
 temper by the first dose I should take. In case 
 I might lose the writing he gave me, I will set 
 down his instructions here. The drug should be 
 taken at bedtime after a light supper; a piece 
 the size of two peas should be mixed in luke- 
 warm water, after having been crumbled in the 
 fingers. This will make five doses, one to be 
 taken every alternate day. 
 
 A HEBREW CEREMONY 
 
 Montaigne gives a minute account of a 
 circumcision witnessed. 
 
 This ceremony takes place in the private 
 house, the lightest and most convenient cham- 
 ber thereof being chosen for the purpose. In 
 this particular case, because the dwelling itself 
 was ill suited therefor, the ceremony took place 
 in the lobby by the door. As with us, a god- 
 father and a godmother are provided for the 
 child, whom the father names, and the circum- 
 cision is performed the eighth day after birth. 
 The godfather seats himself on a table with 
 a pillow on his lap, and the godmother brings to 
 him the child and then withdraws, the child 
 being swaddled after our own fashion. The 
 godfather then loosens the bandages below, and 
 the assistants and the one whose duty it is to 
 perform the operation all begin a chant and 
 continue to sing during the operation, which 
 
4 172 > 
 
 takes about a quarter of an hour. He who 
 officiates need not be a rabbi, and any one of 
 them, whoever he may be, will be anxious to 
 discharge this duty, because they hold that 
 frequent bidding to such a function is a great 
 blessing: nay, they will pay to be called in, 
 offering here a vestment and there something 
 else useful to the child. Moreover, they believe 
 that any one who may circumcise a particular 
 number of children will enjoy a privilege after 
 death, to wit, that the parts about the mouth 
 will never be eaten by worms. On the table 
 where the godfather sits they forthwith lay 
 out plentiful provision of all instruments 
 necessary for this operation, and in addition to 
 these an assistant holds in his hands a phial 
 of wine and a glass. There is also an earthen 
 brazier, at which the operator first warms his 
 hands; and then the child, with the swaddHng 
 bands unloosed, is presented to him by the 
 godfather, who holds it in his lap with the head 
 towards himself. The operator then takes hold of 
 the part and pulls forward the skin thereof with 
 one hand and with the other thrusts back the 
 fleshy substance and fixes a silver instrument on 
 the skin. This instrument, kept close to the 
 flesh within, holds the foreskin in proper posi- 
 tion and prevents any injury to the other parts 
 from the act of cutting. This done, he cuts off 
 the skin and buries it at once in some earth. 
 
FRA'lELLI ALINARI, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 The circumcision of Christ as conceived by Mantegna. 
 Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 
 
4 173 l" 
 which along with other apparatus of the mystery 
 IS beside him, ready prepared in a basin, and 
 then with his bare nails proceeds to remove 
 any other particle of skin which may be left on 
 the flesh. This operation is one requiring con- 
 siderable skill and is somewhat painful, but it 
 is quite free from danger and the wound is 
 almost always healed after four or five days. 
 The children cry as ours cry when they are 
 baptized. As soon as the operation is done, 
 the bystanders hand forthwith to the operator 
 some wine, who, after having taken some of it 
 into his mouth, sucks the bleeding flesh and 
 then empties his mouth, repeating this act 
 thrice. Then they give him in a wrap of paper 
 red powder, which they call dragon's blood, 
 and with this he dresses and covers the wound, 
 and then binds up the same neatly with linen 
 cut for the purpose. He is offered a glass full of 
 wine which, according to report, he blesses by 
 the words he speaks over it, and then drinks a 
 mouthful. He next dips his finger in it and 
 thrice lets the child suck some drops of wine 
 therefrom. This glass they send as it is to the 
 mother and the women of the family who are in 
 some other part of the house, that they may 
 finish the wine that remains. Then another, a 
 third person, takes a silver instrument, made 
 round like a tennis bafl, with a long handle there- 
 to, and pierced with little holes like our perfume 
 
i 174 t 
 
 boxes, and holds it first to the nose of the oper- 
 ator, next to the child, and last to the god- 
 father. They believe that the odours therein 
 help to strengthen and purify the soul for 
 devotion. The operator meantime bears the 
 stains of blood on his mouth. 
 
 THE FLAGELLANTS 
 
 Montaigne was much impressed and 
 mystified by the doings during Lent when 
 people could be seen on the streets scourg- 
 ing themselves with ropes until their backs 
 were raw and bloody. Some of the flagel- 
 lants were not more than twelve or fourteen 
 years of age, boys and girls. He calls it, 
 "the most striking sight I ever saw." Their 
 earnestness and apparent indifference to 
 pain was remarkable; indeed, they seemed 
 to enjoy it and "they might have been 
 chattering about their matters, laughing, 
 bawling about the street, running and 
 leaping when there was so great a crowd 
 that the procession fell somewhat into 
 confusion." 
 
 Along with them went certain men carrying 
 wine, which was offered to them now and again, 
 and some of them took a mouthful thereof, and 
 sometimes sweetmeats were given. The wine- 
 
4 175 > 
 
 carriers often took wine in their mouths and 
 then blew it out and moisted therewith the 
 lashes of the scourges, which were of cord, and 
 were wont to become coagulated with the blood 
 drawn to such an extent that it was necessary to 
 moisten them in order to separate the thongs. 
 They also blew the wine over the wounds of 
 some of the victims. The appearance of their 
 shoes and breeches suggested that they were 
 people of mean condition, and that the majority 
 of them had sold themselves to this service. 
 Moreover, I was told that they were wont to 
 grease their shoulders with a certain prepara- 
 tion, but the wounds I saw were so natural, and 
 the scourging was so lengthy, that assuredly no 
 medicament could benumb them to pain. And 
 with regard to those who may have hired them, 
 what profit would they get were this exhibition 
 nought but trickery? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Pastimes and Distractions 
 
 Montaigne dined with cardinals and 
 other notables, attended the pageants of 
 the church, visited ruins and galleries. A 
 public exhibition of horsemanship given by 
 an Italian who had been for years held 
 prisoner by the Turks afforded him great 
 cause for astonishment. With a guide he 
 faithfully made the round of all the sights. 
 From his visit to the library of the Vatican^ 
 he got the keenest satisfaction. 
 
 The ward^ in which Montaigne sojourned 
 was where the courtesans were thickest 
 and one of his diversions was to frequent 
 
 1 Founded by Nicholas v (son of a surgeon of 
 Sarzana) who discovered the lost work of Celsus in 
 the library of Sant' Ambrogio, Milan. The first 
 librarian was Giovanni Fortelli. Under Sixtus iv, 
 Platina was director. Sixtus v built the present 
 edifice. 
 
 ^ Not far away was the quarter of the city 
 inhabited by the people who made a living by 
 copying manuscripts. Their golden age was under 
 Nicholas v; then they had their influential guild 
 and their special chapel in the church of San 
 Tommaso. 
 
 [176] 
 
FRATELLI ALINARI, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 The Vatican Library. Fontana was the architect. The mural decorations 
 are by artists of the seventeenth century. The chief impulse to the creation of 
 a library at the Vatican was due to Nicholas v, son of a physician of 
 
 Sarzana. 
 
4 177 > 
 their society. Rome was thronged with 
 them. (At the close of the fifteenth century 
 they numbered 5,000 out of a total popu- 
 lation of 100,000 people.)^ 
 
 These ladies charge as exorbitantly for the 
 privilege of simple conversation (which was 
 what I sought, desiring to hear them talk and to 
 take part in their play of wit) as for the supreme 
 favor and are just as niggard thereof. 
 
 Montaigne's chief pleasure was 
 
 The sight of the ladies, and especially the 
 courtesans, who exhibit themselves behind their 
 lattices with such refinement of trickery that I 
 have often wondered at the address they display 
 in attracting men's eyes. Often I have got down 
 from my horse and induced some of these ladies 
 to admit me, and have wondered how it was 
 they contrived to make themselves appear so 
 much handsomer then they really were. They 
 have the art of letting a beholder distinguish 
 them by whatever trait of theirs is most seemly; 
 they will let you see only the upper part of the 
 face, or the lower, or the side, veiling and unveil- 
 ing according to the particular style of coun- 
 tenance, so that an ugly woman is never to be 
 
 ' Thomas Coryat estimates the number of cour- 
 tesans in Venice, including those of Murano, Mala- 
 mocco and vicinity, at 20,000. 
 
4 178 > 
 
 seen at a window. Each one takes her position 
 there for the purpose of saluting and bowing to 
 her acquaintances, who, as they go by, throw 
 up many a glance. 
 
 He indulged in the same pastime in 
 Florence. 
 
 I went out today alone to amuse myself by 
 inspecting those ladies who may be seen by any 
 one who may be so inclined. I saw those of the 
 greatest note, but they were not of much account. 
 The courtesans here stand at the doors of the 
 houses to attract lovers, just as those of Rome 
 and Venice sit by the windows. They take their 
 station at suitable hours, and may be always 
 seen, some with large and some with small 
 company, talking and singing in the streets . . . 
 Their lodgings are all in one part of the city, 
 and are wretched even for what they are, 
 being in no way equal to those of the Roman or 
 Venetian courtesans, any more than their 
 occupants can compare with the aforesaid 
 ladies in beauty, or grace, or carriage.* If any 
 
 * "At Naples each poor courtesan pays to the 
 Prince two Carlines a month, besides greater 
 extortions upon those are fair and having great and 
 many lovers grow proud in apparel and rich in 
 purse." He estimates the number at 60,000. The 
 tribute from this source to the State of Venice he 
 estimated at 300,000 crowns yearly. The pope also 
 made no less gain from those in Rome. In some cities 
 
4 179 > 
 
 one of them is minded to dwell outside these 
 bounds she must not make herself conspicuous, 
 and must hide her real calling under some ficti- 
 tious one.^ 
 
 women of this class are distinguished by their 
 costume. At Siena they wore yellow, white or black 
 veils. In some cities, as at Florence, they were 
 restricted to one or more streets. In others sumptuary 
 laws restricted them to sober dress but they obviated 
 them by bribing the police. (How modern this 
 sounds!) No special requirements were in force as to 
 residence in Venice. At Florence they had "a pecuhar 
 court of justice called the court of honesty where 
 judges clad in purple give them right against those 
 who pay them not for the use of their bodies or any 
 way defraud them. Each courtesan hath commonly 
 her lover whom she maintains, her balordo or gull 
 who principally maintains her, besides her customers 
 at large and her bravo to fight her quarrels . . . 
 The richer sort dwell in fair hired houses and have 
 their own servants but the common sort lodge with 
 bandes called ruffians to whom in Venice they pay 
 of their gain the fifth part . . .paying besides 
 for their beds, linen and feasting and when they 
 are past gaining much are turned out to beg or 
 turn bandes or servants. And for rehef of this misery 
 they have nunneries where many of them are 
 admitted and called the converted sisters." (There 
 is a street of this name in Rome today.) Quotations 
 from Fynes Moryson's Itinerary. 
 
 * Thomas Coryat in "Crudities" tells us that at 
 the play they wore double masks reaching from the 
 top of the forehead to the neck and their necks were 
 so covered and wrapped around "with cobweb 
 
4 i8o l" 
 
 The question of segregation was dis- 
 cussed in his time. 
 
 Some say that to put down public stews is 
 not only to disperse fornication into all places 
 that was confined to one, but moreover, by the 
 difficulty, to incite wild and idle people to this 
 vice. (The Apology.) 
 
 lawn and other things that no part of their skin 
 could be discerned." Each wore a short taffeta cloak. 
 They sat alone on high by themselves. Had any man, 
 even a noble, attempted to unmask one of them he 
 would have been cut into pieces before he could 
 leave the place. One or two httle galleries were re- 
 served for them in the theater. They were tolerated 
 and granted considerable privileges, being regarded 
 as less than the evils that might accrue if the class 
 did not exist, and for the sake of revenue to the 
 state. This revenue was estimated as equivalent 
 to the cost of a dozen galleys in the fleet of the 
 Repubhc. Their residences were palaces, their clothes 
 gorgeous, their jewels abundant — diamonds, pearls 
 and other costly stones — their cheeks painted, their 
 bodies scented. When these have children the babies 
 are sent to a foundhng asylum if not too large 
 to be passed in at the small aperture provided in the 
 wall of the building. Otherwise the mother must 
 bring up the child as best she can. For a male, the 
 profession of arms or the sea or some other pubhc 
 service is open; for a female her mother's career. 
 Each courtesan has her ruffian or bravo to execute 
 her wishes of revenge if defrauded of her pay. 
 
s 
 
 o 
 
i i8i > 
 
 Pope Sixtus V instituted or put in exe- 
 cution severe laws against "outlaws, courte- 
 sans, quarrels, etc." 
 
 In Venice, while at supper one evening, a 
 messenger comes with a present of "a httle 
 book of letters which she had put together" 
 from Signora Veronica Franca. Montaigne 
 gives the servant two crowns. Signora Franca 
 was married in her youth to a Dr. Paniza 
 whom she left to take up the career of a 
 courtesan, her name appearing in an official 
 catalogue giving the names and residences 
 of the hetairse of the city. Later she became 
 a dilettante in letters and cultivated the 
 friendship of eminent writers and painters. 
 In middle hfe she went in for religion and 
 good works and tried to found an asylum 
 for penitent women. ^ She died at forty-five. 
 The book in question was an assortment of 
 letters from her personal correspondence 
 and dedicated to Cardinal d'Este. This 
 prelate was living near Padua in a very fine 
 house belonging to a gentleman of that city. 
 
 * Both Thomas Coryat and Fynes Moryson 
 mention that it was customary for courtesans to 
 retire in middle life to nunneries. Margarita Emihana 
 "a rich cortezan of Venice" founded a monastery 
 between Venice and Murano. 
 
4 1 82 J- 
 
 "He was sick with gout and had been there 
 more than two months for the sake of the 
 baths but more on account of the near 
 vicinity of the ladies of Venice and all sorts 
 of diversion." Fynes Moryson estimated the 
 income of the Venetian government from 
 courtesans at 300,000 crowns a year. Mon- 
 taigne was astonished at the way these 
 women flaunted their charms and spent 
 money on furniture and clothing. 
 
 Montaigne made the tour of the walls of 
 Rome which he rightly says can be done in 
 three or four hours going at a foot pace, for 
 it is only about twelve miles around; he 
 listened with enjoyment to the sermons of 
 popular preachers during Lent; went to 
 Tivoli and Ostia, returning from the latter 
 in a coach and suffering no discomfort — "a 
 rare experience with me;" tried the local 
 baths. The many charming gardens were a 
 source of peculiar delight to him and he 
 testifies to the liberality of the proprietors. 
 "All these beautiful spots are free and open 
 to anyone who may desire to enter therein. 
 . . . The vineyards are amongst the most 
 beautiful features of Rome." 
 
 All these recreations kept me free eflFectually 
 from melancholy, which is the death of me, and 
 
4 183 ]*■ 
 
 from irritability with which I was troubled 
 neither without nor within doors. Thus I found 
 Rome a very pleasant place of sojourn. . . 
 Nothing is so adverse to my own health as list- 
 lessness and sloth, and in Rome I was never 
 without occupation ... I find it, of all towns in 
 the world, the one most filled with the corporate 
 idea, in which diff"erence of nationahty counts 
 least; for by its very nature it is a patchwork of 
 strangers, each one being as much at home as in 
 his own country. 
 
 "I know not how others find the air of 
 Rome but I myself found it very pleasant 
 and healthy ... I never breathed air more 
 pleasant or healthy to my temperament." 
 He quotes a saying to the effect that Roman 
 air is bad for the feet but good for the head. 
 The Romans for the sake of health "find out 
 the different characteristics of the various 
 streets and quarters of the city and even of 
 the suites of apartments in their houses . . . 
 Even those who live in hired dwellings 
 maintain at great cost three or four houses 
 so that they may shift at the proper season 
 according to the advice of their physicians." 
 If this is not strictly true today, it is a fact 
 that certain sections of the city are reputed 
 more healthy than others and that rental 
 
4 184 t 
 
 is largely in proportion to the number of 
 windows that get the sun. 
 
 Montaigne enumerates the varieties and 
 qualities of the meat, fish and vegetables 
 obtainable in the pontifical city. "We 
 tasted artichokes, beans and peas about the 
 middle of March. , . The oil is so good that 
 I never feel that irritation of the throat 
 which always troubles me in France when I 
 have partaken generously of it." Grapes 
 were to be had all the year round. 
 
 At Loreto,^ Montaigne, who was "vastly 
 entertained and interested" by what he saw 
 and heard at the miracle-working shrine, 
 received from "a rich young Parisian travel- 
 ing with a large following" a circumstantial 
 account, attested to by members of his 
 suite, of how his diseased leg had been cured 
 there in a former visit. 
 
 All the surgeons of Paris and Italy had been 
 baffled, the patient had spent more than three 
 thousand crowns, and his knee had been swollen, 
 powerless, and very painful for the last three 
 years. It grew worse, and more inflamed and 
 
 ' According to legend, the house of the Virgin at 
 Nazareth was micraculously transported by succes- 
 sive stages to this spot (1295 a.d.) Loreto was made 
 a township by Sixtus v. 
 
FRATELLI ALINARI, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 rhe Shrine and interior of the Holy House, Loreto. According to the tradition 
 )f the Church this building was miraculously transported through the air from 
 
 Nazareth. 
 
i 185 > 
 
 red, so that he was thrown into a fever. For 
 several] days he had ceased to use any medica- 
 ment or remedy; when, having fallen asleep, he 
 dreamt all of a sudden that he was healed, and 
 that a flash of light seemed to shine around him. 
 He awoke, cried out that he was cured, called 
 for his servants, arose from his bed, and began 
 to walk for the first time since he had been seized 
 with this infirmity. The sweHing of the knee dis- 
 appeared, the shrivelled and half-dead skin 
 got well from that time without any further 
 remedy. Being now completely cured, he had 
 come back to Loreto, his cure having been 
 worked about a month earlier, while he was 
 here. He had been in Rome while we were stay- 
 ing there. These were all the authentic facts I 
 could collect from the discourse I had with him 
 and with his people. 
 
 Montaigne put up votive tablets for 
 himself, wife and daughter but one feels that 
 he did this largely through his ever-present 
 desire to be all things to all men. In Germany 
 and elsewhere he left a wooden tablet bearing 
 his name and arms in every inn where 
 previous guests had observed this practice. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 Seeking Recovery in Earnest 
 
 We may conveniently insert here an 
 account of the prolonged hydrotherapy 
 Montaigne underwent at the health resort 
 he esteemed above all others. He preferred 
 to patronize abroad such spas as com- 
 bined pleasant company, comfortable quar- 
 ters and a variety of good food with the 
 medicinal virtues of the waters. He found 
 all these at the Baths of Lucca whose springs 
 had been famous from Roman times. The 
 Baths are beautifully located some twenty 
 miles from the city of that name, at the 
 confluence of two mountain streams whose 
 ripples fill the valleys with music. ^ Scattered 
 
 ^ These valleys were made famous among literati 
 by Heine, in his "Reisebilder"; but the value of the 
 medicinal springs was known to physicians and 
 patients as early as the tenth century and perhaps 
 in Roman times. Frederick ii, who enacted so many 
 laws bearing on medical education, health and 
 sanitation throughout his Italian dominions, was 
 one of the first distinguished patrons of the place. 
 The fortunes of the Baths of Lucca fluctuated with 
 those of the charming city of Lucca. In the fourteenth 
 century certain citizens founded a Society of the 
 [i86] 
 
4 187 J- 
 
 about the steep hillsides covered with 
 chestnut trees are hotels, villas and palaces 
 connected by wide shady avenues and well- 
 kept paths. "The rooms are pleasant and 
 private . . . each set of apartments has 
 a water-closet and a public and private 
 entrance . . . From my chamber I could 
 hear all night the gentle murmur of the 
 river below." 
 
 Companions of the Baths of Corsena (that was the 
 original name) and one Puccio, a member, built a 
 hospital near the springs. As existing accommodations 
 for bathers were insufficient the Republic of Lucca 
 appointed Puccio a sort of commissioner for the place 
 and he did his work of enlarging and improving the 
 buildings very well. Lucca's famous lord, Castruccio 
 Castracani, found time to improve the roads to the 
 Baths and build bridges in the vicinity in the midst 
 of more warlike endeavors, for he crowned many of 
 the nearby mountains with castles to strengthen 
 his hold on the country. After Castruccio's death 
 the Baths passed to Louis of Bavaria, and finally 
 became an appanage of one of the hospitals of Lucca. 
 So low had the fortunes of the republic fallen by the 
 middle of the fifteenth century that the Baths were 
 leased to two barber-surgeons for the nominal rent 
 of 12 pounds of trout, twice a year. These lessees 
 neglected the place and we next find the Baths put 
 under the care of three councillors of the Guild of 
 Merchants. Finally the rich citizen, Domenico 
 Bertini, patron of the artist Civitali, undertook the 
 restoration of the establishment, building chapels 
 and new bath houses. 
 
4 1 88 t 
 
 Hither at a later date came Shelley, 
 Byron, Charles Lever, the Brownings, Wal- 
 ter Savage Landor, Tennyson, and many 
 other famous personages, not for the baths, 
 but for the pure country air in the days 
 before railroads had brought Switzerland, 
 the Tyrol and the Engadine within easy 
 reach of foreign sojourners in Italy. 
 
 Dr. Bendinelli of Lucca published a book about the 
 Baths in 1483 which stimulated local interest but 
 they were already favorably known abroad. The 
 waters were shipped on mule-back to the Duke of 
 Ferrara in 1593. Prince Ferdinand of Austria received 
 shipments regularly at Innsbruck. Lucca shared the 
 general rearrangement of Europe ordered by Napo- 
 leon and became the fief of his sister Elise Bacciocchi, 
 Princess of Piombino. Though she regarded Lucca 
 as a very small domain for a person of her import- 
 ance and eventually wheedled from the Emperor the 
 whole of Tuscany, she did a great deal for the Baths, 
 building an excellent road from Lucca, erecting a 
 palace for her occupation and encouraging various 
 industries and amusements among the local popu- 
 lation. After the fall of Napoleon, Lucca passed to 
 Marie Louise, reverted to Austria and finally became 
 a part of united Italy. 
 
 Next to Montaigne, the most distinguished patient 
 to seek healing at the Baths of Lucca was the great 
 anatomist Gabriele Falloppio, an authority on 
 mineral waters, the discoverer of the semi-circular 
 canals, the auditory nerve and chorda tympani, and 
 a versatile writer on surgery and anatomy. He is 
 
4 189 > 
 
 In all, Montaigne spent nearly five 
 months here and he has left us a minute 
 account of everything he did during his 
 two sojourns. His initial experience was a 
 disagreeable one. He was made very sick 
 by a dose of cassia taken on the advice of 
 his landlord, an apothecary, whom he 
 
 enthusiastic in his praise of the Baths, saying: "I 
 thank God for many things, but more specially 
 for having created the hot springs of Corsena. 
 Indeed it appears that He almost made them with 
 His own hands, for I, who was entirely deaf, have 
 regained three-quarters of my hearing by the use 
 of douches of these waters. Other deaf people I saw 
 who were cured, and blind men whose eyesight 
 was restored. Therefore it is not astonishing that I 
 say figuratively that the baths of Corsena were made 
 by God's own hands." . . . "The Villa with its good 
 air, excellent food, fine buildings, and gentle, amiable 
 inhabitants, seems a veritable paradise." 
 
 Remarkable was the visit of the Chevalier de 
 St. George, son of James 11, a pretender to the 
 throne of England, accompanied by his consort 
 Marie Sobieski. The simple inhabitants accorded 
 the adventurers a royal welcome and in return James 
 Stuart proceeded to exercise the royal prerogative of 
 touching for scrofula or king's evil. The ceremony 
 was most elaborate and attracted attention far and 
 wide. To treat the Pretender as a king was to offend 
 England, and the English ambassador to Turin and 
 Tuscany terrified the Lucchese by threatening to 
 stop the importation to England of olive oil and 
 other native products by way of reprisal. 
 
4 I go I* 
 
 pronounces much "lacking in intelligence 
 conapared with my apothecary in Rome." 
 Montaigne had to forego his dinner and 
 was laid up "for well nigh four and twenty 
 hours and made a vow to take no more of 
 the stuff. . . I would rather suffer from 
 colic than have my stomach thus upset, my 
 taste ruined and my general health deranged 
 by cassia." 
 
 He drank the water in large quantities 
 after being told that this was the proper 
 thing. It was tasteless and slow in its 
 action. 
 
 Some take it in bed, the physicians giving 
 special directions to keep the stomach and the 
 feet warm, and to avoid all fatigue. Peopte of 
 the neighborhood have it conveyed to their 
 houses three or four miles distant. As a proof 
 that this water is not strongly aperient it may be 
 noted that the apothecaries here keep a certain 
 water brought from a spring near Pistoia, 
 sharp on the pafate and very hot when drawn 
 from the weli, which they give to patients be- 
 fore taking the native water, alleging that 
 quicker and more efficient result is thereby 
 induced . . . If I may give an opinion concern- 
 ing these waters I would say they can do little 
 harm or good; that they are ineffectual and 
 
4 19^ I*" 
 feeble, and the fear is that they may inflame 
 the kidneys rather than purge them . . . The 
 bed of the stream from which the drinking 
 water comes is red and coated with rust, where- 
 fore, seeing that it was likewise very insipid, I 
 concluded that it contained much iron and 
 would be binding in its effect; indeed little 
 came of what I took on this Thursday. Medicine, 
 after all, is a poor affair. I said casually a little 
 time ago that I repented having taken so strong 
 a purge inasmuch as this water, finding vacancy 
 within, acted as nutriment . . . The effect of 
 this water upon me was an increase of strength, 
 and I began to digest it half an hour after 
 taking it; moreover, I made a good round of 
 two miles on the way back to my lodgings. 
 Perhaps this abnormal exercise may have made 
 me feel young again. Every other morning I 
 had gone straight back to my room to avoid the 
 chill of the morning air, my house not being 
 more than thirty paces from the spring . . . 
 Some of the people here take three or four 
 grains of coriander in every glass of water they 
 drink, as a remedy for wind. On the Easter of 
 May 14th I took more than five pounds' weight 
 of the water of Bernabo, my glass holding 
 somewhat more than a pound. 
 
 On Tuesday, May i6th, according to the 
 local custom, which seems to me an excellent 
 one, I gave over drinking the water and 
 
4 192 J- 
 
 remained in the bath an hour or more, having 
 settled myself right under the conduit-pipe, 
 because in the other parts of the bath the water 
 seemed somewhat chilly. Being troubled con- 
 tinually with wind in the epigastrium and the 
 intestines, and in less degree in the stomach — 
 albeit without pain — I suspected that this 
 discomfort was caused by the water, wherefore I 
 gave up drinking it. This morning I found the 
 bath particularly agreeable, and could easily 
 have taken a nap there. It did not produce per- 
 spiration, but I had myself well rubbed, and 
 then went to bed for a while. 
 
 On Thursday I was a little more on the alert 
 and bathed somewhat earher. In the bath I 
 sweated fairly well and gave my head a douche 
 under the spout. The bath left me rather weak, 
 with a feehng of heaviness about the reins, and 
 I voided gravel continually and some phlegm 
 likewise as if I had drunk of the spring, indeed 
 it struck me that this water used in the bath pro- 
 duced the same effect as when drunk . . . Here 
 I observed a marked result of the use of this 
 bath, forasmuch as my brother (M. de Matte- 
 coulon) who had never passed any gravel 
 either in common way or while drinking the 
 water at any other bath in my company, now 
 passed a large quantity . . . On Monday morn- 
 ing I went somewhat late to my bath, as I was 
 shaved and had my hair cut, and I bathed my 
 
•f 193 > 
 
 head more than a quarter of an hour by holding 
 it under the principal spout . . . And as to 
 shaving the head, the custom here with all was 
 to be shaven, and then put a piece of satin on the 
 head, held only by a sort of net, but my smooth 
 pate had no need of this ... At times I felt 
 my eyes dazzled when I exerted them in read- 
 ing or gazing on any ghttering object. I was 
 greatly troubled thereanent, remembering that 
 I had suffered from this weakness ever since I 
 was seized with headache at Florence, that is to 
 say, heaviness about the forehead without any 
 pain; a haziness before the eyes which, though 
 it did not Hmit my vision, disturbed it in a way 
 I cannot describe. Since this time this headache 
 had recurred twice or thrice, and now became 
 more persistent, but left me free otherwise. 
 But after I used the douche to my head it came 
 back every day, and my eyes watered freely, but 
 without pain or inflammation. Moreover, until 
 I had this attack I had not suffered from head- 
 ache for more than ten years; and, fearing lest 
 the douche may have induced this weakness of 
 the head, I did not use it today — Thursday — 
 and remained only an hour in the bath. 
 
 Hearing that it had a reputation for 
 strengthening the liver and removing 
 eruptions on the face he remarks: "A'^fact 
 of which I made careful note as a service I 
 
 13 
 
4 194 1* 
 would fain render to a most estimable 
 French lady." 
 
 He found things much to his liking. Only 
 at Bagneres were the lodgings better and 
 that resort alone of all he had visited 
 compared with it for beauty of situation. 
 "People live more by rule at these baths 
 than at our own and abstain rigorously, 
 especially from drinks." Hour glasses were 
 provided at each of the baths here. 
 
 I slept and read as I was inclined, and when I 
 went abroad I always found conversation in 
 plenty with the people in the streets, who 
 would be ready for a chat at any hour of the 
 day; and then there were the shops, and the 
 churches, and the market-place. Going about 
 like this, from one country to another, I was 
 never at a loss for material for the satisfying of my 
 curiosity. And all this time I felt my mind at ease, 
 as much as ill-health and old age would allow, and 
 little prone to seize opportunities for disturbing 
 itself from the outside world. The only loss I 
 felt was that of a sympathetic companion, for, 
 being alone, I had to enjoy all these pleasures by 
 myself, and could not share them with another. 
 
 Montaigne enlivens his stay by giving 
 a ball and goes into many minutiae about 
 the selection of prizes for the girls and his 
 
4 195 > 
 
 method of allotting them. He joins the 
 country people in their dancing to show 
 himself democratic in spirit or, as he puts 
 it, "so as not to seem over-ceremonious." 
 His habitual politeness was never laid 
 aside. "I used the same bath on the two 
 following days, and on the 19th I went 
 again and remained there two hours, rather 
 later in the day in order to allow a lady of 
 Lucca the first turn, a just and proper rule 
 being here observed to give the ladies the 
 use of their bath at their convenience." 
 
 And now we have some reflections on 
 physicians and a strange tale or two about 
 their inefficiency. 
 
 Both of the springs did me much good where- 
 fore I feel that I have been a gainer in refusing 
 credence to those physicians who recommend 
 their patients to give up drinking at once sup- 
 posing that a cure be not eflfected the first 
 day ... I have just read concerning these 
 waters in a book written by one Donati, a 
 physician, his advice being to take a light dinner 
 and a good supper; and, for my experience after 
 drinking the water for another day, I decided 
 that his view was the correct one. Franciotti, 
 another doctor, controverts him in this and in 
 divers other particulars. [Donati and Franciotti 
 
4 196 t 
 
 were physicians of Lucca who had pubKshed 
 treatises on the Baths of Lucca.] . . . It divert- 
 ed me to consider the various prescriptions given 
 by physicians in different parts of Italy, so 
 great was their antagonism, and this was 
 especially marked in the matter of these 
 baths and douches; indeed, out of twenty 
 opinions no two were found to agree, but, on the 
 other hand, the authors accused each other of 
 murders of all sorts . . . 
 
 The aforesaid patient suffered great trouble 
 through the strange action of wind, which was 
 wont to issue from his ears with such force that 
 he could not sleep, and when he yawned great 
 volumes of wind would burst out from the same 
 place. He declared that he could best ease his 
 stomach by using as a clyster four large corian- 
 der comfits after moistening and softening them 
 in his mouth, the relief being sure and speedy. 
 He was the first person I ever saw wearing one 
 of those big hats of peacock's feathers and 
 covered with light taffetas; the crown, a good 
 palm's height, was thick, and had within-side 
 a coif of sarcenet made to fit the head so that the 
 sun might not strike upon it. It was surrounded 
 by a curtain a foot and half wide, to serve the 
 purpose of our parasols, which indeed are very 
 inconvenient to use on horseback. 
 
 The physicians are wonderstruck to see how 
 the majority of French guests here take the 
 
4 197 > 
 
 waters in the morning and baths the same day . 
 . . . On the Tuesday I remained two hours in 
 the bath, and held my head under the douche 
 for a good quarter of an hour. At this time a 
 Cremonese merchant living at Rome came to 
 the bath. He was afHicted with divers strange 
 infirmities, nevertheless he could talk and 
 walk about and seemingly enjoyed his life. 
 His chief infirmity lay in the head, his memory 
 having perished, so he said, through some 
 weakness thereof; for instance, after a meal he 
 would not be able to say what dishes had been 
 put before him. If he happened to leave the 
 house on any business he must needs always 
 come back ten times to inquire where was the 
 place to which he was bound. He could hardly 
 ever get through the paternoster. When he did 
 get to the end of it he would begin it again a 
 hundred times, never perceiving at the end 
 thereof that he had begun, or at the beginning 
 that he had finished. He had suffered from 
 bhndness, deafness, and toothache, and had, 
 moreover, such an access of heat in the reins 
 that he always wore a piece of lead over that 
 region. For many years he had observed most 
 strictly the rules laid down by his physicians in 
 his case. 
 
 Of a certain judge who visited him he 
 says: 
 
4 198 |ii- 
 
 Amongst other matters he told me a singular 
 story about himself, how, through pricking the 
 ball of the thumb with an artichoke^ some years 
 ago, he had like to have died from inanition, 
 how on this account he fell into such a wretched 
 state that he lay in bed five months without 
 moving. As he lay all this time on the reins, 
 they became so inordinately heated that a 
 discharge of gravel was produced from which he 
 had suffered for more than a year and from 
 colic as well. At last his father, the governor 
 of Velitri, sent him a certain green stone, 
 which he had got from a friar who had been in 
 India, and while he had this stone about him he 
 suffered neither from gravel nor pain. He had 
 been in this state for two years. As to the prick 
 aforementioned the thumb and the greater part 
 of the hand were useless, and besides this the 
 arm was so much weakened that he came every 
 year to the baths of Corsena to treat the arm 
 and thumb with the douche, as he was now 
 doing. 
 
 It was while here that Montaigne picked 
 up a remarkable story about a man who 
 was taken captive by the Turks and re- 
 mained with them a long time so that he 
 was given up for dead by his relatives. 
 
 ^ In Hazlitt's translation the cause of the trouble 
 is given as the sting of a beetle. 
 
i 199 > 
 
 Finally he came home and at first was not 
 recognized by his mother. 
 
 Then he made himself known to her, and after 
 having been as it were lost ten or twelve years, 
 kissed his mother, who shrieked aloud and fell 
 senseless and showed no sign of life until the 
 next day, the physicians being in despair of her. 
 She came round at last, but she died soon 
 afterwards, every one being of the opinion that 
 this shock shortened her hfe. 
 
 A patient of some consequence, the 
 nephew of a prominent cardinal, was taken 
 sick and the case being obscure a consulta- 
 tion was held. Montaigne tells us that he 
 laughed in his sleeve when the physicians in 
 attendance waited on him with the request 
 that he listen to their opinions and 
 arguments because the patient was resolved 
 to be guided entirely by his decision. "The 
 same request was made to me with regard 
 to other matters both here and at Rome." 
 
 He accepts the current story that a leper 
 who bathed and drank the waters was cured. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Montaigne's Condition Grows Worse 
 
 Montaigne appears to have received no 
 real benefit from his faithful and persistent 
 health-seeking at the Baths of Lucca. His 
 stay there was marked by much digestive 
 disturbance, attacks of colic, headache, 
 pains in various parts of the body and severe 
 toothaches. After describing his sleepless 
 nights with the latter he says : 
 
 On August the 25th my kidney troubles 
 abated, and I found myself about as well as 
 before, save that I had frequent pain both by 
 day and night in my left cheek, but it did not 
 last long. I remember to have been troubled 
 with the same pain when at home. On the 27th 
 I was so sharply troubled with toothache after 
 dinner that I sent for the doctor, who, when he 
 had taken account of all the symptoms, and 
 had marked especially that the pain subsided 
 while he was there, decided that this was no 
 material fluxion, but one extremely subtle, and 
 little else than wind which ascended from the 
 stomach to the head, and, having mixed itself 
 with the humours there, caused this disorder. 
 This opinion seemed to me reasonable, seeing 
 [200] 
 
4 201 !«• 
 
 that I had often suffered from similar seizures 
 in other regions of my body. 
 
 A mood of discouragement was the 
 result. 
 
 It would be too great cowardice and squeam- 
 ishness on my part if, knowing that I am every 
 day in danger of death from these ailments, and 
 drawing nearer thereto every hour in the course 
 of nature, I did not do my best to bring myself 
 into a fitting mood to meet my end whenever it 
 may come. And in this respect it is wise to take 
 joyfully all the good fortune God may send. 
 Moreover there is no remedy, nor rule, nor 
 knowledge whereby to keep clear of these 
 evils which from every side and at every minute 
 gather round man's footsteps, save in the resolve 
 to endure them with dignity, or boldly and 
 promptly make an end of them. 
 
 Naturally enough he now becomes in- 
 clined to disparage the waters. 
 
 I am sure this draught gave me the vapours 
 and made my head ache, and on Tuesday I 
 drank nine pounds from the common spring and 
 felt my head affected immediately after. In 
 sooth my head was in very bad case, having 
 never recovered from the effects of the first bath 
 I took. It has pained me less often of late, and in 
 
4 202 1^ 
 
 a different way, as it has not weakened me or 
 dazzled my eyes as it did a month ago. I suf- 
 fered chiefly in the back, and pain never attacked 
 my head, but it flew to my left cheek, a0"ecting 
 all parts thereof, the teeth down to the very 
 roots, the ear, and a portion of the nose. The 
 pang would be brief, but as a rule sharp and burn- 
 ing and wont to attack me frequently both 
 night and day. This is how my head fared at 
 this juncture. I am firmly convinced that the 
 fumes of this water both in drinking and in 
 bathing — ^though I hold drinking to be the 
 worse — are very bad for the head, and even 
 worse for the stomach. And on this account 
 the patients here are forced to take medicines 
 to correct the action of the water. On the 
 Thursday I gave up drinking and rode in the 
 morning to see Costrone, a large village in the 
 mountains. 
 
 On Sunday, September the 3rd, I spent more 
 than an hour in the bath, and was much 
 troubled by wind, but without pain. In the 
 night and on Monday morning I had toothache 
 so badly that I feared it must arise from a 
 decayed tooth. I chewed mastic all the morning 
 without rehef. During the night I sent for an 
 apothecary, who gave me some aqua vitse, and 
 bade me hold it to the spot where the pain was 
 sharpest. The rehef I got was marvellous; for, 
 as soon as I took it into my mouth, the pain 
 
4 203 1" 
 
 ceased; but as soon as I spat out the spirit the 
 pain returned, wherefore I was forced to keep the 
 glass always at my lips. I could not keep the 
 spirit in my mouth continually, for, as soon as 
 the pain was reduced, I would through weari- 
 ness fall into a heavy sleep, and then some 
 drops of the spirit would run down my throat 
 and choke me so that I was forced to get rid of it. 
 Just at daybreak the pain seemed to leave me. 
 
 On the Tuesday morning all the gentlemen 
 staying at the bath came to see me as I lay in 
 bed. I afterwards caused a plaster of mastic to 
 be put on my left temple, where the throbbing 
 pain had been worst, and had less pain during 
 the day. At night they applied lint to the cheek 
 and the left side of the head, and my sleep was 
 painless though disturbed. 
 
 On the Wednesday I had constant toothache 
 and pain in the left eye, and on Thursday I 
 spent an hour in the large bath. This same morn- 
 ing there came to hand, by way of Rome, a 
 letter from M. de Tausin, written from 
 Bordeaux on August 2nd, in which he informed 
 me that, on the preceding day, I had been 
 chosen to be Mayor of that city by public choice, 
 and begged me that, out of my good will for the 
 city, I would take up this burden. 
 
 On his way to Florence he wrote : 
 
 This morning I felt my head heavy and my 
 sight troubled, these being symptoms of those 
 
4 204 l*" 
 
 headaches with which I have been affected 
 for the last ten years. This valley was formerly a 
 morass, and Livy relates how Hannibal was 
 forced to ride an elephant when he traversed it, 
 and lost one of his eyes on account of the 
 severity of the season : it is assuredly a flat and 
 lowlying country and greatly at the mercy of 
 the floods of the Arno. I refused to eat at din- 
 ner, but I repented of this, for had I eaten I 
 might have vomited, and I always find the 
 speediest remedy thereby. Otherwise I am 
 troubled by my head for a day or two, as was 
 now the case. The road was crowded with coun- 
 try-folk taking provisions to Florence where we 
 arrived after crossing one of the four stone 
 bridges, over the Arno, having ridden twelve 
 miles. 
 
 Montaigne visited the famous Campo 
 Santo at Pisa and reports the popular 
 notion that the earth in which they were 
 interred made bodies swell and decompose 
 within forty-eight hours. "And this belief 
 is a plausible one because in this particular 
 cemetery bones are very rarely seen, 
 scarcely any indeed, neither is there any 
 place where they are collected and reinterred 
 as in other cities." 
 
 Of the health of the city (destined later 
 
4 205 I^ 
 
 to be a favorite residence for English 
 consumptives) he says : 
 
 Only a short time ago this city bore an evil 
 name for its unhealthy air, but this is vastly 
 improved since Duke Cosimo has drained the 
 marshes by which it is surrounded. Formerly 
 the place was so unhealthy that when the 
 government wanted to banish any one, and at 
 the same time get rid of him, they always 
 banished him to Pisa, where in a few months the 
 job was done. There are no partridges here, 
 though the Duke has taken great pains to foster 
 them. 
 
 I received several visits at my lodging from 
 Girolamo Borro, a physician and doctor of 
 philosophy, and when I went to see him on 
 July 14, he made me a present of his book on the 
 flux and reflux of the sea, written in ItaHan. At 
 the same time he showed me another book he 
 had written in Latin on the diseases of the body. 
 
 Montaigne appears to have entertained 
 considerable regard for Dr. Borro but 
 probably chiefly in his capacity of professor 
 of philosophy at the University of Pisa.^ 
 
 ' Pisa . . hath an university, wherein the 
 Duke maintains 48 professors with stipends accord- 
 ing to their worthiness from 50 crowns yearly 
 upward. At my being there Doctor Poppone, the 
 
4 206 ]!• 
 
 Borro eventually came to the notice of the 
 Inquisition and after prosecution at its 
 hands was dismissed from the university 
 and died six years later. In one of his essays 
 Montaigne characterizes the doctor as "an 
 honest man" which may be regarded as 
 high praise from such a source. 
 
 On the 25th I paid a visit to Cornacchino, a 
 famous Pisan physician and teacher. He lived 
 according to a rule of his own, which differed 
 vastly from the rules of his art. Immediately 
 after dinner he would go to sleep and would 
 drink a hundred times a day. He read to me 
 some rhymes of his own, written in the Pisan 
 dialect which were not unpleasing. According 
 to him the baths near the city are of no great 
 account, but he had a high opinion of those of 
 Bagno Acqua, about sixteen miles distant, 
 which he declared to be marvellously good for 
 liver complaints, detailing to me some wonder- 
 ful cures, and for the stone and colic as well. 
 He recommended me, however, before taking 
 these waters, to drink some of the Delia Villa 
 spring. He is of opinion that, after bloodletting, 
 medicine has no curative agent to compare 
 with baths, if only they be used with under- 
 chief professor for the common and civil law, had a 
 1,000 crowns, and Mercuriales, the chief professor of 
 physic, had 1,700 crowns. Fynes Moryson: Itinerary. 
 
4 207 I" 
 
 standing. He also told me that at Bagno Acqua 
 the lodgings are good, and that I might make 
 myself very comfortable there. 
 
 Tommaso Cornacchini was a famous 
 physician of Arezzo, and professor of medi- 
 cine at the University of Pisa. One of his 
 sons was also distinguished in medicine. 
 
 Regarding the waters of Pisa, Montaigne 
 says: 
 
 I took a draught of it to test it, and found it 
 lacking in taste and in smell also. I only detected 
 a shght roughness on the tongue. It is scarcely 
 warm at all and very pleasant to drink. I 
 looked at the water as it flowed from the spout, 
 and perceived therein the same minute particles, 
 white atoms, which had offended me at Baden, 
 and which I judged to be some dirt come in 
 from without. Now, I believe these atoms to be 
 connected with the mineral properties of the 
 water . . . It is said to be good for the liver and 
 for the eruptions caused by liver disorders. The 
 same draught is prescribed here as at other 
 baths, and exercise after drinking is commonly 
 taken: or you may take a sweating bath, or 
 use it in other forms . . . This morning I passed 
 another stone somewhat larger and looking as 
 if it must have been detached from one much 
 larger. God knows whether it is so. Let it be as 
 he wills. 
 
 15 
 
4 208 Is- 
 
 At Pisa we get an intimation that he had 
 the ordinary sight-seer's weakness for 
 souvenirs. Among other things, he bought 
 a cup of Indian nut which he said was quite 
 "as efficacious against the spleen and gravel 
 as tamarisk." When he started back to 
 France he shipped from Rome a case of 
 things he had collected. Did it contain the 
 two boxes of "all sorts of medicaments" 
 which the people of Tivoli made from the 
 "scum" of the sulphurous waters at Tivoli 
 or had the medicaments been used up al- 
 ready? The case of curios was twenty days 
 getting as far as Milan. 
 
 After Pisa he sought out the baths of 
 Vignone, where he was troubled with 
 orbital and frontal headache. Of Naviso he 
 says: 
 
 The bath is likewise of great use to the sick 
 people who come here in the spring of the year, 
 and the man who hires it sells a quantity of the 
 mud taken from the bath, which mud, when 
 dissolved in hot oil, is good for the itch in 
 human beings, and for scabby dogs and cattle, 
 when diluted with water. The price of this mud 
 when sold on the spot is two giulios a load, but 
 they sell it also in dried balls for seven quattrini 
 apiece. We saw here a lot of dogs belonging to 
 
4 209 I" 
 
 Cardinal Farnese, which had been sent here for 
 the bath. 
 
 At the baths near Viterbo he made his 
 usual careful observations. 
 
 This water throws up a white scum, which 
 hardens readily and becomes solid Hke ice, 
 making a crust on the surface of the water. 
 If a hnen cloth be dipped therein, it will quickly 
 become loaded with this scum and quite stiff. 
 This substance is sold into other parts for use in 
 cleansing the teeth, and when chewed it has no 
 more taste than earth or sand; indeed, the com- 
 position thereof is reputed to be the same as 
 that of marble, in which case it might well 
 harden in the kidneys. It is said, however, that 
 the water which is exported in bottles has no 
 sediment and remains quite clear. I imagine it 
 may be drunk in any quantity, and that the 
 sharpness before named may give it a certain 
 savour and make it easier to swallow ... I 
 gathered faint hope of making a cure when I 
 read an inscription on the wall, written by a 
 certain man who cursed his physician for 
 having sent him to such a place, and affirmed 
 that he had suffered much ill from his stay there. 
 Moreover, the proprietor hinted to me that I 
 had come too late in the season, and certainly 
 did not urge me to take the waters. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Return to France 
 
 When Montaigne got word of his election 
 as mayor of Bordeaux and received intima- 
 tions from the king that he ought to accept 
 he started home and traveled by forced 
 marches, though not omitting to see all he 
 could on the way. He was in Rome when 
 the more urgent summons reached him. His 
 daily rides frequently amounted to twenty 
 and thirty miles. How vital to the invalid 
 was the condition of the roads! The high- 
 ways of Tuscany had recently been im- 
 proved and leveled by the Grand Duke and 
 we can understand Montaigne's fervor in 
 praying that God might reward him for this 
 "work of the greatest service to the pubKc." 
 On leaving Parma "we changed horses at 
 every post and for 2 posts I made them go 
 at full gallop so as to test the strength of 
 my loins. I felt no ill effects or weariness 
 therefrom." These few words tell more than 
 volumes of description. We picture a weary 
 traveler tortured by the hardships of the 
 road and his trying bodily ailments but 
 [210] 
 
4 211 t 
 
 never losing his pluck. He was taken sick 
 the night he reached Siena. 
 
 I suffered for two hours from colic, and I 
 fancied I felt the movement of a stone. Early 
 on Thursday morning I went to see one Guig- 
 Helmo Fehx, a Jewish doctor, who talked to me 
 
 The Fort du Ha, opposite Montaigne's house in Bordeaux 
 
 some time as to my general rule of living with 
 regard to my kidneys and the gravel. I then 
 left Siena, and was again troubled with cohc 
 for three or four hours. Then the pain came to a 
 crisis, and I was assured that a stone must have 
 passed. We travelled twenty-eight miles and 
 supped at Ponteaelce, where I passed a stone 
 bigger than a grain of millet, with a quantity 
 
4 212 |i» 
 
 of red gravel, but I suffered no pain. We left on 
 the Friday morning, and halted sixteen miles 
 along the road at Altopascio, where we stopped 
 an hour to feed our cattle. 
 
 A consecutive perusal of his notes shows 
 that Montaigne in spite of his diligent search 
 for health was very much worse off when 
 he left Italy than when he set out on his 
 travels. That he consulted physicians in 
 Rome, Pisa, Siena and elsewhere suggests 
 that the repeated attacks of colic had some- 
 what mollified his prejudice against the 
 profession and that the gravity of his condi- 
 tion was more and more borne in upon him. 
 The failure to get any benefit from these 
 gentlemen doubtless caused him to censure 
 them with greater severity when he sat 
 down once more to write essays at home. 
 
 He had previously gone from Venice to 
 Padua by boat though "always somewhat 
 in fear of water transit, being advised 
 that it deranged his stomach, and now, 
 being minded to ascertain whether the 
 motion on this river, which indeed is most 
 steady and uniform provided that the boat 
 be drawn by horses, would cause him incon- 
 venience, he made trial of it and found that 
 he suffered no ill effects therefrom." In his 
 
4 213 }■ 
 essays he quotes from Plutarch, to whom 
 he was most partial of all the ancient 
 writers, to the effect that seasickness arose 
 from fear but declares that this could not 
 hold in his case for though very subject to 
 seasickness he had no fear. Montaigne cites 
 the case of animals who get seasick and 
 mentions particularly hogs in whom there is 
 no occasion to suspect the element of fear. 
 He then goes on to say that he cannot long 
 endure coach, htter or boat, or indeed any 
 means of transportation except a horse. He 
 found a litter less tolerable than a coach and 
 experienced no more discomfort from travel 
 on the water when there was considerable 
 motion than in calm weather. He says, " It 
 is the interrupted motion which disturbs me 
 and the more when it is mild. The physicians 
 have directed me to apply pressure and 
 encircle the lower abdomen with a cloth 
 to remedy this discomfort, something 
 which I had never resorted to being in the 
 habit of struggling against the weaknessess 
 which are in me and of conquering them by 
 myself." Now he has not the vigor to endure 
 seasickness and gives a variety of other rea- 
 sons for excusing to himself the omission from 
 his schedule of so important a place as Genoa. 
 
4 214 I*" 
 
 I could not face the sea voyage on account of 
 my weak stomach, and I shrank from the trouble 
 of finding lodging in Genoa in its present 
 crowded state, even more than from the dis- 
 comforts of the journey by land. Moreover, I 
 heard that the road from Genoa to Milan was 
 haunted by thieves, and as I was exceedingly 
 anxious to get home, I resolved to leave Genoa 
 aside. 
 
 But in spite of everything the passion 
 for sight-seeing survives. 
 
 I prolonged my journey by ten miles in order 
 to see Pavia. On Wednesday, October 25th, I 
 started early over a very good road, and during 
 the way I voided a small soft stone and a good 
 deal of gravel. 
 
 On the last day of October Montaigne 
 started from Turin and prepared to cross 
 the Alps, leaving the plain at Susa. He 
 crossed the Alps partly on horseback and 
 partly in a litter which four men carried on 
 their shoulders, being frequently relieved 
 by other sets of bearers. 
 
 Getting back to France Montaigne 
 regrets some of the things left behind. 
 "Here I began to appreciate the excellence 
 of the Italian oil, of which I was never 
 
i 215 > 
 
 conscious after eating, but I found that the 
 oil of these parts upset my stomach." At 
 Lyons "on Saturday, Saint Martin's Day, 
 I had a sharp pain in the stomach and kept 
 my bed till midday. I felt disordered all 
 day and took no dinner and a very light 
 supper." As he approached Clermont, where 
 he tarried a day to spare the young horses 
 lately bought at Lyons, there was evidence 
 everywhere of the havoc wrought by the 
 recent plague. 
 
 I heard some remarkable accounts thereof. 
 The dwelling of the Seigneur of the town, the 
 manor-house of the Canillacs, was burnt so as to 
 destroy the pestilence with fire. 
 
 On Monday the 20th I started in the morning, 
 and on the heights of Pui de Dome I passed a 
 stone, somewhat broad and flat. I had felt it all 
 the morning and even the day before with a 
 slight pain in the kidneys. It was neither very 
 hard nor very soft. . . As far as Limoges this 
 road is badly furnished with inns, which, however, 
 give you tolerably good wine, but they are used 
 only by muleteers and couriers going to Lyons. 
 My head was uneasy, the storms and cold 
 winds and rain were very bad for it; and in 
 sooth it got its fill of discomfort in this journey 
 over a region where the winter is sharper than 
 anywhere else in France. 
 
4 2l6 > 
 
 Italy was not the only country where the 
 inns furnished bad wine. "At Chastein, I 
 was forced to drink new unclarified wine, as 
 no other was to be had, and the next day 
 went on five leagues farther." The account 
 of the journey now becomes more and 
 more succinct. Montaigne is evidently pre- 
 occupied with thoughts of the civic duties 
 he is about to assume and the narrative is 
 little more than a statement of distances 
 traversed each day. On the last day he 
 rode 21 miles to reach the Chateau de 
 Montaigne, "having quitted this same 
 spot on June 22, 1580, to go to La Fere, 
 my journey having lasted seventeen months 
 and eight days." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Clinical Record of the Journey 
 
 A review of Montaigne's physical con- 
 dition during his journey across France to 
 Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, 
 reaching as far south as Rome, is startling. 
 He was increasingly the victim of head- 
 ache. He had pains and weakness of the 
 eyes. Indigestion, manifesting itself as general 
 malaise, vague abdominal distress or sharp 
 pain, nausea, dizziness and flatulence, was 
 frequent. Now and again distress in a 
 limb hampered the freedom of his move- 
 ments. Later came repeated attacks of 
 toothache and facial neuralgia, especially 
 of the orbital and frontal regions. From 
 time to time he is made sick by the treat- 
 ment prescribed. Occasionally he is hoarse, 
 catches cold, suffers from exposure to damp- 
 ness, rain and cold, or has an annoying pru- 
 ritus of the hand and other parts. Added to 
 these endurable discomforts were crises of 
 renal cohc varying from mere aching of the 
 loins to the most acute torture, lasting from 
 two to twenty-four hours. Some of them were 
 [217] 
 
4 2l8 > 
 
 "endurable," some "did not interfere" were 
 "not unusually severe," not "more violent 
 than usual." By others he was "grievously 
 tormented" and some occasioned "violent 
 agony." Again and again he voids gravel 
 in "incredible amount," "continuously" or 
 "much." The actual calculi passed averaged 
 more than one a month for the whole period 
 of the tour. 
 
 But the record of the days and nights 
 deals with others than himself — ^the people 
 he meets and what they say and do; the 
 things he sees and hears and what thoughts 
 they inspire. Pain and suffering are mini- 
 mized at the time and forgotten the moment 
 they are past. They do not even dim the 
 prospect ahead, despite the clear indication 
 that the road must soon come to an end. 
 The mental life was everything; the physical 
 counted for nothing save as it benumbed 
 his faculties for the moment. Truly here 
 was an indomitable spirit, the temper of 
 steel. 
 
 Montaigne is very precise in the analysis 
 of his symptoms while taking the pro- 
 longed course of treatment at Bagni di 
 Lucca, but elsewhere limits himself to 
 saying that he had colic or headache, mild 
 
4 219 1*° 
 
 or severe, and how long it lasted. In most 
 instances when a stone is passed he describes 
 it and, naturally, size and hardness are the 
 features of chief interest. At Stertzing the 
 calculus was medium-sized, crumbly, yellow 
 with white center. The two at Plombi^res 
 were small. At Venice the two stones were 
 large. The calculi were often preceded, 
 accompanied or followed by gravel as in 
 Florence, the Baths of Lucca and Rome. 
 A fortnight after his arrival in the latter 
 city he was taken so ill that he submitted 
 to treatment at the hands of the French 
 physician in attendance on the Cardinal 
 of Rambouillet, aided by a dexterous 
 apothecary whom he later on remembers 
 with gratitude and pronounces "intelli- 
 gent." They gave him several large pills of 
 cassia put into his mouth on the end of a 
 wet knife. These acted freely on the bowels 
 and the following day Montaigne took two 
 pills of Venetian turpentine done up in a 
 wafer and put into his mouth on a silver 
 spoon along with some drops of syrup. The 
 only effect he observed from this was that 
 it gave to the urine the odor of violets. 
 After this, Montaigne took three times a 
 drink which tasted just like almonds and he 
 
4 220 ]!• 
 
 was assured it was nothing else; but he 
 was convinced that it contained seeds of 
 cucumber, melon, gourd and pumpkin. 
 The indisposition continued unrelieved for 
 about ten days when much gravel was 
 followed by a large, long, solid, hard stone 
 which took six hours in passing. 
 
 In all, while in Rome, Montaigne had 
 five attacks of cohc followed by one or 
 more calculi. One of these was the size and 
 shape of a pine kernel. In two of the attacks 
 he passed "several." 
 
 At Bagni di Lucca hematuria was fre- 
 quent and sometimes alarming. This symp- 
 tom became almost constant after he 
 reached home when the utmost powers of 
 philosophy had to be summoned to replace 
 hope. Hope had not been utterly renounced 
 at the Baths of Lucca and there, noticing 
 on one occasion that the renal output was 
 less than one-fifth of the water ingested 
 ("There's but poor reliance upon these 
 physicians and their remedies"), he began 
 careful estimates of what he drank and what 
 he passed in twenty-four hours and soon 
 was happy to notice that they tallied with 
 each other. At the Baths he passed only 
 two stones but much gravel and blood. He 
 
4 221 > 
 
 was convinced that the calculi were large 
 when they left the kidney but became 
 fragmented in the bladder. While here he 
 makes the only mention of pain in the 
 bladder. The period from August 15 to 
 September 1 1 , seems to have been one of 
 continuous, severe suffering. Jaundice 
 developed. The gravel passed was reddish, 
 the urine full of blood. The stone passed on 
 the 24th was preceded and followed by 
 lively hemorrhage. The stone was the 
 length of a pine nut, as wide as a bean, the 
 largest he had yet passed. "I felt infinite 
 delight when I had got rid of it, though the 
 
 passage was very painful I knew 
 
 very well that something unusual was at 
 hand." 
 
 Montaigne was regular in his habits. 
 "My stomach and I never fail of our punc- 
 tual assignation which is at leaping out of 
 bed, if some indispensable business or sick- 
 ness do not interfere with us" but at Pisa 
 he did not have a single movement except 
 by the aid of medicine, "a bad and treacher- 
 ous assistant." At Bagni di Lucca gaseous 
 distention so distressed him that he took 
 a clyster of oil, camomile and anise-seed 
 water. It was administered with "great 
 
4 222 J» 
 
 skill and address" by his landlord. This was 
 followed by marchpane and four spoonfuls 
 of wine and next day he felt infinitely better. 
 Some of the gravel passed at the Bagni was 
 red; some red outside and gray inside. Of the 
 stones passed at Lucca one was small and 
 rough, another was clearly but a fragment 
 of a larger one and the third was red outside 
 and white within; hard and rough. The stone 
 passed near Viterbo was the size of a grain 
 of wheat — small, hard and red. "To facili- 
 tate the exit of this sort of stone you would 
 do well to stop the course of your water for a 
 minute or two, for the increased force with 
 which it comes forth afterwards greatly 
 aids the progress of the stone. I got this 
 hint from Monsieur Langon of Arsac." 
 The one voided on the Puy de Dome was 
 large, long and flat, neither hard nor soft. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Montaigne and Death 
 
 During the eleven years of life that 
 remained to him after his return from Italy, 
 Montaigne was occupied with his official 
 duties in Bordeaux, with annotating and 
 expanding Books i and ii of his "Essays," and 
 with the composition of Book in. He died 
 in his beloved chateau, September 13, 1592, 
 and was buried in the church of the Feuil- 
 lants, Bordeaux. 
 
 For three days before he died Montaigne 
 was unable to speak and had to make his 
 wishes known by signs or written words. 
 The nature of his disability is not clear. The 
 actual cause of death is given as a quinsy 
 accompanied by paralysis of the tongue. 
 Did he have Angina Ludovici, was he 
 merely afflicted with a complicating aphonia, 
 was there a true edema of the glottis due to 
 extension of the inflammation from neigh- 
 boring tissues or to a manifestation of 
 chronic disease of the kidneys in which 
 much tissue change must have resulted 
 [223] 
 
4 224 t 
 
 from the many stones harbored by them? 
 We do not know. 
 
 At all events he had friends and neighbors 
 around him and a priest administered the 
 sacraments so that Montaigne passed away 
 in the conventional and accepted manner 
 and perhaps this demise was more in har- 
 mony with the spirit of the real, inner man 
 than the casual reader of his essays might 
 suspect. Certainly he always professed a 
 belief in God and a respect for the Church 
 in its great essentials. In this he was neither 
 illogical nor superstitious. Montaigne fully 
 appreciated that the infinite is unknowable 
 and that to comprehend God, or even to be 
 capable of a perfectly spiritual conception 
 of Him is impossible. Besides this, he real- 
 ized, with truly scientific insight, that any 
 ultimate explanation of physical phenomena 
 is beyond us. His scepticism, though real, 
 was not synonymous with utter negation. 
 He knew little but believed in God and 
 admitted the obligation to recognize and 
 worship Him in some fashion. Instead of 
 rejecting everything, because he could not 
 know everything, Montaigne fell back on 
 the forms of worship, the external obser- 
 vances taught by the Church, considering 
 
PANAJOU FRErES, bordeaux, FRANCE 
 
 Site of the original burial place of Montaigne in the apse of 
 the church of the Feuillants, Bordeaux. 
 
4 225 !*■ 
 
 them as good as any and as having the 
 merit of wide acceptance and time-honored 
 employment. In spite ofthe errors and crimes 
 of the Church (he objected to roasting 
 peoples' bodies for their supposed spiritual 
 good) he selected its fashion of worship and 
 the incidental ceremonial as the ones most 
 pleasing to him. His religion was a pure 
 monotheism and while he uses the word 
 Christian, prefers the Lord's Prayer^ to any 
 other and holds it a model and amply suffi- 
 cient, and a distinct argument against 
 importuning the deity with an infinity of 
 requests for the gratification of petty per- 
 sonal wishes, and while he quotes from the 
 New Testament, the direct references to 
 Christ are few. Nothing in his writings 
 implies that he enjoyed any very comfort- 
 ing belief in the vicarious suffering of Christ 
 for sinners. He seems to have had a modified 
 Hebraic bias harking back to the tenets of 
 his mother's family. 
 
 Montaigne had found comfort in the veil 
 that screens the future from us. Man must 
 
 1 Montaigne apparently had the habit of daily- 
 prayer. "I have a thousand times gone to bed in my 
 own house . . and after my paternoster, etc," 
 (Of Vanity.) 
 
 15 
 
4 226 ]!• 
 
 perform his allotted tasks unhampered by 
 the thought that death may interfere and 
 make all his beginnings vain. 
 
 Neither health, which I have hitherto ever 
 enjoyed very strong and vigorous, and very 
 seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness 
 contract my hopes. Methinks I scape every 
 minute, and it eternally runs in my mind, that 
 what may be done tomorrow may be done today. 
 Hazards and dangers do, in truth, Kttle or 
 nothing hasten our end; and if we consider how 
 many more remain and hang over our heads, 
 besides the accident that immediately threatens 
 us, we shall find that the sound and the sick, 
 those that are abroad at sea, and those that sit 
 by the fire, those who are engaged in battle, 
 and those who sit idle at home, are the one as 
 near it as the other. (Study of Philosophy is to 
 Learn to Die.) 
 
 How sudden and unexpected the advent 
 of death may be, he illustrates from history. 
 
 To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever 
 have imagined that a Duke of Britanny should 
 be pressed to death in a crowd, as that Duke 
 was at the entry of Pope Clement into Lyons? 
 . . . ^schylus, being threatened with the fall 
 of a house, was to much purpose so circumspect 
 to avoid that danger, when he was knocked on 
 
4 227 }■ 
 
 the head by a tortoise-shell falhng out of an 
 eagle's talons in the fields. Another was choked 
 with a grape-stone : an Emperor killed with the 
 scratch of a comb in combing his head. ^milHus 
 Lepidus, with a stumble at his own threshold, 
 and Afidius with a jostle against the door, as he 
 entered the council chamber . . . Whilst Caius 
 Juhus the physician was anointing the eyes of a 
 patient, death closed his own; and if L may 
 bring in an example of my own blood; a brother 
 of mine. Captain St. Martin, a young man, of 
 three and twenty years old, who had already 
 given sufficient testimony of his valour, playing 
 a match at tennis, received a blow of a ball a 
 fittle above his right ear, which, though it was 
 without any manner or sign of wound, or depres- 
 sion of the skull, and though he took no great 
 notice of it, nor so much as sat down to repose 
 himself, he nevertheless died within five or six 
 hours after, of an apoplexy occasioned by that 
 blow. With so frequent and common examples 
 passing every day before our eyes, how is it 
 possible a man should disengage himself from 
 the thought of death; or avoid fancying that it 
 has us every moment by the collar? What 
 matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to 
 pass, provided a man does not terrific himself 
 with the expectation? For my part, 1 am of this 
 mind, that if a man could by any mean s avoid 
 it, though by creeping under a calveskin, I am 
 
4 228 > 
 
 one that should not be ashamed of the shift : all I 
 aim at is to pass my time pleasantly, and with- 
 out any great reproach, and the reactions that 
 most contribute to it, I take hold of, as to the 
 rest, as little glorious and exemplary as you 
 would desire. (Study of Philosophy is to Learn 
 to Die.) 
 
 But still the anticipation of dissolution 
 was a painful one and he summoned all his 
 philosophy to the rescue. 
 
 Let us disarm him of his novelty and strange- 
 ness, let us converse, and be familiar with him, 
 and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as 
 death; let us upon occasions represent him in all 
 his most dreadful shapes to our imagination; at 
 the stumbling of a horse, ^ at the falling of a 
 tile,' at the least prick with a pin, let us presently 
 consider, and say to ourselves, well, and what if 
 it had been death itself: and thereupon let us en- 
 courage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore 
 amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remem- 
 brance of our frail condition before our eyes, 
 
 ^ William the Conqueror died of rupture following 
 a fall when his horse stepped on a firebrand at the 
 capture of Mantes in Normandy. 
 
 ' Simon de Montfort at the siege of Toulouse, 12 17. 
 Perhaps Montaigne refers here to the death of Titus 
 Annius Milo (ally of Pompey) killed at the siege of 
 Cosa^n Calabria or Pyrrhus killed at the siege of 
 Argos. 
 
4 229 l" 
 
 never suffering ourselves to be so far transported 
 with our delight, but that we have some intervals 
 of reflecting upon, and considering how many 
 several ways this joIHty of ours tends to death, 
 and with how many dangers it threatens it . . . 
 But moreover, nature herself does assist and en- 
 courage us. I f the death be sudden and violent, we 
 have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I find, that 
 as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter 
 into a certain loathing, and disdain of life. I 
 find I have much more ado to digest this resolu- 
 tion of dying when I am well in health than 
 when sick languishing of a fever. . . But 
 nature, leading us by the hand, an easy, and as 
 it were, an insensible pace, step by step con- 
 ducts us to that miserable condition, and by 
 that means makes it familiar to us, so that we 
 perceive not, nor are sensible of the stroke then, 
 when our youth dies in us, though it be really 
 a harder death, than the final dissolution of a 
 languishing body, which is only the death of old 
 age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an 
 uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a 
 spritely and florid being to one that is unwieldy 
 and painful. The body, when bowed beyond its 
 natural spring of strength, has less force either 
 to rise with, or support a burden. . . Death 
 is the beginning of another fife. So did we weep, 
 and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so 
 did we put off our former veil in entering into it. 
 
4 229 I" 
 
 never suffering ourselves to be so far transported 
 with our delight, but that we have some intervals 
 of reflecting upon, and considering how many 
 several ways this joIHty of ours tends to death, 
 and with how many dangers it threatens it . . . 
 But moreover, nature herself does assist and en- 
 courage us. If the death be sudden and violent, we 
 have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I find, that 
 as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter 
 into a certain loathing, and disdain of Hfe. I 
 find I have much more ado to digest this resolu- 
 tion of dying when I am well in health than 
 when sick languishing of a fever. . . But 
 nature, leading us by the hand, an easy, and as 
 it were, an insensible pace, step by step con- 
 ducts us to that miserable condition, and by 
 that means makes it famihar to us, so that we 
 perceive not, nor are sensible of the stroke then, 
 when our youth dies in us, though it be really 
 a harder death, than the final dissolution of a 
 languishing body, which is only the death of old 
 age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an 
 uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a 
 spritely and florid being to one that is unwieldy 
 and painful. The body, when bowed beyond its 
 natural spring of strength, has less force either 
 to rise with, or support a burden. . . Death 
 is the beginning of another Hfe. So did we weep, 
 and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so 
 did we put off our former veil in entering into it. 
 
•I 230 > 
 
 Nothing can be grievous that is but once, and is 
 it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will 
 so soon be dispatched. Long life and short, are 
 by death made all one; for there is no long, nor 
 short, to things that are no more. . . Life in 
 itself is neither good nor evil, it is the scene 
 of good or evil, as you make it; and, if you have 
 lived a day, you have seen all; one day is equal, 
 and like to all other days; there is no other 
 light, no other shade, this very sun, this moon, 
 these very stars, this very order and revolu- 
 tion of things, is the same your ancestors 
 enjoyed, and that also entertain your posterity.* 
 . . . And come the worst that can come, the 
 distribution and variety of all the acts of my 
 comedy, is performed in a year. If you have 
 observed the revolution of the four seasons, 
 they comprehend the infancy, youth, virility, 
 and old age of the world. The year has played 
 his part, and knows no other way, has no new 
 farce, but must begin and repeat the same again; 
 it will always be the same thing. (Study of 
 Philosophy is to Learn to Die.) 
 
 A man may by custom fortify himself against 
 pains, shame, necessity, and such like accidents; 
 
 * The world will turn when we are earth 
 As though we had not come nor gone; 
 There was no lack before our birth, 
 When we are gone there will be none. 
 Omar Khayyam: Rubaiyat. 
 
4 231 > 
 
 but, as to death, we can experiment it but once, 
 and are all apprentices when we come to it. 
 (Use Makes Perfectness.) 
 
 It is not without reason that we are taught to 
 consider sleep, as a resemblance of death.* With 
 how great facility do we pass from waking to 
 sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose 
 the knowledge of hght, and of ourselves ! Per- 
 adventure the faculty of sleeping would seem 
 useless and contrary to nature, being it deprives 
 us of all action and sense, were it not that 
 by it nature instructs us, that she has equally 
 made us to die, as to Hve, and from hfe presents 
 us the eternal estate, she reserves for us after 
 it, to accustom us to it, and to take from us the 
 fear of it. But such as have by some violent 
 accident fallen into a swoon, and in it have 
 lost all sense; these, methinks, have been very 
 near seeing the true and natural face of death. 
 Many things seem greater by imagination, than 
 they are in effect. I have passed a good part of my 
 age in a perfect and entire health; I say, not 
 only entire, but moreover spritely and wanton. 
 This estate, so full of verdure, jollity and vigor, 
 made the consideration of sickness so formidable 
 to me, that when I came to experiment it, I 
 found the attacques faint, and easy in compari- 
 son of what I had apprehended. Of this I have 
 
 ^ How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother 
 Sleep. Shelley. 
 
4 232 > 
 
 daily experience; if I am under the shelter of a 
 warm room, in a stormy and tempestuous 
 night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and 
 am afflicted for those who are out in the field: if I 
 am there myself, I do not wish to be anywhere 
 else. This one thing of being always shut up in a 
 chamber, I fancied insupportable: but I was 
 presently inured to be so imprisoned a week, 
 nay a month together. And have found that in 
 the time of my health, I did much more lament 
 the sick, than I think myself to be lamented 
 when I am so, and that the force of my imagina- 
 tion enhances near one-half of the essence and 
 reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to 
 die I shall find the same, and that I shall not 
 find it worth the pains I take, so much prepara- 
 tion and so much assistance as I call in, to 
 undergo the stroke. 
 
 Death has some forms that are more easy 
 than others, and receive divers qualities, ac- 
 cording to every one's fancy. Amongst the 
 natural ones, those that proceed from weak- 
 ness and stupidity I think the most favorable: 
 amongst those that are violent, I can worse 
 endure to think of a precipice than the fall of a 
 house, that will crush thee flat in a moment, 
 and a wound with a sword, than a harquebus 
 shot: and should rather have chosen to poison 
 myself with Socrates, than stab myself with 
 Cato. (Of Vanity.) 
 
4 233 f 
 
 Our very insignificance should palliate 
 death. 
 
 Few men die in the opinion that it is their 
 last hour/ and there is nothing wherein the 
 flattery of hope does more delude us. It never 
 ceases to whisper in our ears, others have been 
 much sicker without dying; my condition is 
 not so desperate as 'tis thought, and at the 
 worst, God has done other miracles. Which 
 happens, by reason that we set too much value 
 upon ourselves. It seems as if the universality 
 of things were in some measure to suffer by our 
 dissolution, and that it did commiserate our 
 condition. For as much as our depraved sight 
 represents things to itself after the same manner, 
 and that we are of opinion they stand in as much 
 need of us as we do of them; hke people at sea, 
 to whom mountains, fields, cities, heaven and 
 earth are tossed at the same rate they are. 
 (Of Judging of the Death of Another.) 
 
 ^William Osier in "Science and Immortality" 
 mentions "careful records of about 500 death-beds, 
 studied particularly with reference to the modes of 
 death and the sensations of the dying ... 11 
 showed mental apprehension, 2 positive terror . . . 
 I bitter remorse. The great majority gave no sign 
 one way or the other; like their birth, their death 
 was a sleep and a forgetting." 
 
4 234 > 
 
 To his high sense of what was appropriate 
 and fitting the banahties of the deathbed 
 were peculiarly offensive. 
 
 It is the dreadful looks, the grim apparatus 
 with which we surround Death, that affright 
 us. Quite a new aspect of life — the cries of 
 mothers, of wives, of children, visits from 
 dazed, heart-broken people; the presence of 
 numbers of pale footmen, their eyes swollen 
 with crying; a dark room, lighted tapers, our 
 couch besieged by physicians and preachers — 
 in short, every kind of horror and alarm around 
 us. (To Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die.) 
 
 I have seen many miserable dying, surrounded 
 with all their train: 'tis a crowd that chokes 
 them. Tis against duty, and a testimony of 
 Httle kindness, and httle care, to permit you 
 to die in repose, one torments your eyes, another 
 afflicts your ears, another tires your faltering 
 tongue; you have neither sense nor member 
 that is not violated by them; your heart is 
 wounded with compassion to hear the mourning 
 of those that are your real friends, and perhaps 
 with spite, to hear the counterfeit condolings of 
 those who only pretend and make a show of 
 being so. Whoever has been delicate that way, 
 when well, is much more so in his weakness. 
 (Of Vanity.) 
 
i 235 > 
 
 He has some pertinent remarks about 
 old age as a natural death. 
 
 What an idle conceit it is, to expect to die of 
 a decay of strength, which is the last of effects 
 of the extremest age, and to propose to ourselves 
 no shorter lease of hfe than that, considering 
 it is a kind of death of all others the most rare, 
 and very hardly seen. We call that only a 
 natural death, as if it were contrary to nature. 
 
 Signature of Marie de Gournay in a letter to J. Lipsius. 
 
 to see a man break his neck with a fall, be 
 drowned in a shipwreck at sea; or snatched 
 away with a pleurisy, or the plague, and, as if 
 our ordinary condition of Hfe did not expose us 
 to these inconveniences. Let us no more flatter 
 ourselves with these fine sounding words: we 
 ought rather, at a venture, to call that natural, 
 which is common and universal. To die of old 
 age, is a death rare, extraordinary and singular, 
 and therefore so much less natural, than the 
 others: 'tis the last and extremest sort of dying; 
 and the more remote, the less to be hoped for. 
 (Of Age.) 
 
 17 
 
4 236 > 
 
 It must have been the remembrance of 
 La Boetie's last hours and the hope that his 
 presence had comforted the dying man that 
 prompted him to say : 
 
 In such a necessity a tender hand is required, 
 and accommodated to his sentiments, to scratch 
 him just in the place where he itches, or not to 
 meddle with him at all. If we stand in need of a 
 midwife [sage Jemme] to bring us into the world, 
 we have much more need of a wiser man to help 
 us out of it. Such a one, and a friend to boot, a 
 man ought to purchase at any rate for such an 
 occasion. I am not yet arrived to such a pitch 
 of bravery as to disdain all assistance in that 
 
 -frmc^t dt facfi£iJsaf7it 
 
 This autograph of Montaigne's wife is a facsimile of that 
 affixed to her marriage contract. 
 
 fatal hour,' nor pretend to be able so to fortify 
 myself in my own strength, that nothing can 
 assist or defend me; I have not brought myself 
 
 ' There is no confessor like unto Death ! 
 Thou canst not see him, but he is near; 
 Thou needst not whisper above thy breath. 
 
 And he will hear; 
 He will answer the questions. 
 The vague surmises and suggestions. 
 
 That fill thy soul with doubt and fear! 
 Longfellow: The Golden Legend. 
 
4 237 t 
 
 to that; I endeavor to hide myself, and to 
 escape from this passage, not by fear but by 
 art. I do not intend in this act of dying to muster 
 up and make a show of my Constance. For 
 whom should I do it? All the right and title I 
 have to reputation will then cease. I content my- 
 self with a death involved within itself, quiet, 
 solitary, and all my own, suitable to my retired 
 and private life. (Of Vanity.) 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 BoNNEFON, P. Montaigne, L'Homme et 
 L'CEuvre. Paris, 1893. 
 
 Champion, E. Introduction aux Essais de 
 Montaigne. Paris, 1900. 
 
 CoRYAT, T. Crudities. Glasgow, 1905. 
 
 Cotton, C. Ward, Lock and Tyler. Transla- 
 tion of essays of Montaigne. London, 1875. 
 
 DowDEN, E. Michel de Montaigne. Philadelphia, 
 1905. 
 
 Hazlitt, William. Works of Montaigne. Phila- 
 delphia, 1849. 
 
 Moryson, Fynes. Itinerary (unpublished chap- 
 ters). London, 1903. 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Accoramboni, Vittoria, 136 
 
 Achilles, 15 
 
 ^schylus, 226 
 
 Afidius, 227 
 
 Alexander VI, 168 
 
 Alexander the Great, 50, 86 
 
 Amyot, Jacques, x 
 
 Argenterius, Jean, 93 
 
 Augustus, 31 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus, 4 
 
 Bacciocchi, £lise (Princess of Piombino), 188 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 20 
 
 Bauchinus, 123 
 
 Bearded Mary, 150 
 
 Bendinelli, Dr., 188 
 
 Bertini, Domenico, 187 
 
 Beuther, 112 
 
 Binard, II2 
 
 de Biron, Marshal, 44 
 
 de la Boetie, fitienne, 13, 15, 16, 41, 44, 47, 68, 236 
 
 Borgia, Caesar, 168 
 
 Borro, Girolamo, 205, 206 
 
 Brittany, Duke of, 226 
 
 Browning, Robert & Elizabeth Barrett, 188 
 
 Buckle, Henry Thomas, vii, viii, ix, 62 
 
 Buoncompagno, Ugo, 169 
 
 Byron, Lord, 188 
 
 Csesar, Julius, 41 
 
 Calvin, John, 8 
 
 Canillacs, 215 
 
 Capello, Bianca, 144, 145 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, xiii 
 
 Carnesecchi, 139 
 
 [239] 
 
424ol!- 
 
 Castracani, Castruccio, 187 
 
 de' Catanei, Vannozza, 168 
 
 Cato, The Younger, 72, 232 
 
 Catullus, 147 
 
 Celsus, Aurelius Cornelius, loi, 176 
 
 Civitali, 187 
 
 Charles V, 138 
 
 Charles VIII, 2 
 
 Charles IX, 13 
 
 Charles, the Emperor, King of Bohemia, 125 
 
 de la Chassaigne, Franfoise, 16 
 
 Christ, Jesus, 225 
 
 Clement, Pope, 226 
 
 Comacchino, Tommaso, 206, 207 
 
 Cornaro, Luigi, 88 
 
 Coryat, Thomas, 8, 33, 34, 108, 129, 132, 137, 159, 161, 162, 
 
 177. 179, 181 
 Cosimo, Duke, 205 
 Cotton, Charles, 57 
 Cousin, Victor, xiii 
 Cowper, William, 86 
 Cusano, Nicholas, 139 
 Cyrus, 35 
 Damon, 15 
 Dante, 167 
 David, 15 
 Democrates, 31 
 Demophon, 50 
 Dickens, Charles, 90 
 Diodati, Giovanni, 138 
 Diogenes, 79 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 40 
 Donati, 195 
 Dowden, Edward, xii 
 Dubois, Jacques (Sylvius), 123, 124 
 Elbeuf, Duke of, 112 
 Emiliana, Margarita, i8i 
 Erasistratus, 93 
 d' Este, Cardinal, 181 
 Falloppio, Gabriele, 188 
 
4241!'° 
 
 Famese, Alessandro, 136, 209 
 
 Farnese (famHy), 136 
 
 Felix, Guiglielmo, 211 
 
 Ferdinand, Prince of Austria, 188 
 
 Fernel, Jean, 94 
 
 Ferrara, Duke of, 188 
 
 de Foix, Gaston, 13 
 
 Fortelli, Giovanni, 176 
 
 Franca, Veronica, i8i 
 
 Franciotti, 195 
 
 Francis I, 2, 15 
 
 Francis, Duke of Tuscany, 144, 210 
 
 Frederick II, 186 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, 40 
 
 Galen, 123 
 
 Germanicus, 51 
 
 Ghirardi, Luigi Lilio, 169 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, 40 
 
 de Gournay, Marie, 24, 235 
 
 Gratarola, G., 8 
 
 Gregory XIII, 168, 169 
 
 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, 167 
 
 Grynaeus, Simon, 123 
 
 de Guise, Duke, 112, 113 
 
 Hannibal, 204 
 
 Harris, Walter, 39 
 
 Haussmann, Baron Georges Eugene, 168 
 
 Hazlitt, William, 57, 198 
 
 Hegesius, 79 
 
 Heine, Heinrich, 186 
 Henry III, 12 
 
 Henry IV, King of Navarre, 13, 37 
 Herophilus, 93 
 Hippocrates, 93 
 Hogarth, William, 19 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 69 
 Homer, 41 
 Horace, 41, 43 
 Jacob, 126 
 James II ix 
 
Jonathan, 15 
 
 Julius, Caius, 227 
 
 Khayyam, Omar, 230 
 
 Kircher, Athanasius, 169 
 
 Lamartine, Alphonse M. L., viii 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 188 
 
 Langon, Monsieur, 222 
 
 Lante, Dukes of, 136 
 
 Leonora (Montaigne's daughter), 19 
 
 Lepidus, ^millius, 227 
 
 L' Escale, 94 
 
 Le Sage, Alain Ren§, 70 
 
 Lever, Charles, 188 
 
 Livy, Titus, 204 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 236 
 
 Louis of Bavaria, 187 
 
 Louis Xn, 2, 15 
 
 de Louppes, Antoinette, 2 
 
 Lowell, James Russel, 40 
 
 de Malherbe, Franfois, 72 
 
 Marie Louise, 188 
 
 Martyr, Peter, 139 
 
 de Mattecoulon, M., 192 
 
 Maximilian, 35 
 
 Mercuriales, 206 
 
 Milo, Titus Annius, 228 
 
 Mogul, the Great, 162 
 
 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, vii, viii, ix, x, xii, xiii, xiv 
 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 36, 37, 39 
 41, 43, 44, 47, 62, 68, 70, 76, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93 
 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, loi, 102, 103, no, 113, 122, 124 
 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 140, 142 
 143, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158 
 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 174 
 176, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185,' 186, 188, 189, 190, 194, 198 
 199, 200, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217 
 218, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 228. 
 
 Montaigne, Peter, 2 
 
 Montaigne (family), 112 
 
 Montesquieu, viii 
 
4243^ 
 
 de Montfort, Simon, 228 
 
 Moryson, Fynes. 10, 39, 45, 123, 129, 130, 134, 141, 144, 179, 
 181, 182, 206 
 
 della Mirandola, Pico, 137 
 
 Miinster, Sebastian, 41, 131 
 
 Napoleon, 188 
 
 Nicholas V, 176 
 
 Osier, Sir William, 87, 233 
 
 d' Ossat, Armand, 36 
 
 Paniza, Dr., 181 
 
 Paracelsus, 94, 123, 124 
 
 Pare, Ambroise, 150 
 
 Paul III, 136, 138 
 
 Patroclus, 15 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 167 
 
 Plater, Felix, 123, 154 
 
 Platina, 176 
 
 Platirus, 123 
 
 Plato, 41, 121 
 
 Pliny, "The Elder," 41, 102 
 
 Plutarch, x, 86, 213 
 
 Pompey, 228 
 
 Poppone, Dr., 205 
 
 della Porta, 137 
 
 Prunis, 129 
 
 Puccio, 187 
 
 Pyrrhus, 228 
 
 Pythias, 15 
 
 Rabelais, Franpois, viii, xiii 
 
 Rambouillet, Cardinal of, 219 
 
 Rowe, Sir Thomas, 162 
 
 Ruskin, John, 141 
 
 de St. George, Chevalier, 189 
 
 St. John Baptist, 125 
 
 St. Martin, Captain, 227 
 
 St. Paul, 41, 141 
 
 Sappho, 147 
 
 Sand, George, viii 
 
 Savonarola, 139 
 
 de S^onde, Raymond, 8 
 
4244> 
 
 de S^ur (family), 19 
 
 Seneca, Lucius Anseus, 33 
 
 de Sens, Cardinal, 142 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 20, 40, 129 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 29, 188, 231 
 
 Simon, Thomas, 7, 123 
 
 Sixtus IV, 176 
 
 Sixtus V, 168, 176, 181, 184 
 
 Sobieski, Marie, 189 
 
 Socrates, 232 
 
 Speusippus, 79, 80 
 
 Stapanus, 123 
 
 Stuart, James, 189 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, 32 
 
 de Tausin, M., 203 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 188 
 
 Terence, 41 
 
 Terry, Edward, 162 
 
 Twain, Mark, 146 
 
 Valdez, Melendez, 139 
 
 Vesalius, Andreas, 123 
 
 Vignola, Giacomo Barocchio, 136 
 
 de Villerey, M., 1 12 
 
 Virgil, 43 
 
 William, the Conqueror, 228