Essays of Michel de Montaigne - 067

his second; in this duel he found himself matched with a gentleman much
better known to him. (I would fain have an explanation of these rules of
honour, which so often shock and confound those of reason.) After having
despatched his man, seeing the two principals still on foot and sound, he
ran in to disengage his friend. What could he do less? should he have
stood still, and if chance would have ordered it so, have seen him he was
come thither to defend killed before his face? what he had hitherto done
helped not the business; the quarrel was yet undecided. The courtesy
that you can, and certainly ought to shew to your enemy, when you have
reduced him to an ill condition and have a great advantage over him, I do
not see how you can do it, where the interest of another is concerned,
where you are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of
yours: he could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard of him he
was there to serve. And he was therefore enlarged from the prisons of
Italy at the speedy and solemn request of our king. Indiscreet nation!
we are not content to make our vices and follies known to the world by
report only, but we must go into foreign countries, there to show them
what fools we are. Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Libya, they
will not live a month together without fighting; so that you would say
this peregrination were a thing purposely designed to give foreigners the
pleasure of our tragedies, and, for the most part, to such as rejoice and
laugh at our miseries. We go into Italy to learn to fence, and exercise
the art at the expense of our lives before we have learned it; and yet,
by the rule of discipline, we should put the theory before the practice.
We discover ourselves to be but learners:
“Primitae juvenum miserae, bellique futuri
Dura rudimenta.”
[“Wretched the elementary trials of youth, and hard the
rudiments of approaching war.”--Virgil, AEneid, xi. 156.]
I know that fencing is an art very useful to its end (in a duel betwixt
two princes, cousin-germans, in Spain, the elder, says Livy, by his skill
and dexterity in arms, easily overcoming the greater and more awkward
strength of the younger), and of which the knowledge, as I experimentally
know, has inspired some with courage above their natural measure; but
this is not properly valour, because it supports itself upon address, and
is founded upon something besides itself. The honour of combat consists
in the jealousy of courage, and not of skill; and therefore I have known
a friend of mine, famed as a great master in this exercise, in his
quarrels make choice of such arms as might deprive him of this advantage
and that wholly depended upon fortune and assurance, that they might not
attribute his victory rather to his skill in fencing than his valour.
When I was young, gentlemen avoided the reputation of good fencers as
injurious to them, and learned to fence with all imaginable privacy as a
trade of subtlety, derogating from true and natural valour:
“Non schivar non parar, non ritirarsi,
Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte;
Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi!
Toglie l’ira a il furor l’uso de l’arte.
Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi
A mezzo il ferro; il pie d’orma non parte,
Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto;
Ne scende taglio in van, ne punta a voto.”
[“They neither shrank, nor vantage sought of ground,
They travers’d not, nor skipt from part to part,
Their blows were neither false, nor feigned found:
In fight, their rage would let them use no art.
Their swords together clash with dreadful sound,
Their feet stand fast, and neither stir nor start,
They move their hands, steadfast their feet remain.
Nor blow nor foin they strook, or thrust in vain.”
--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., c. 12, st. 55, Fairfax’s translation.]
Butts, tilting, and barriers, the feint of warlike fights, were the
exercises of our forefathers: this other exercise is so much the less
noble, as it only respects a private end; that teaches us to destroy one
another against law and justice, and that every way always produces very
ill effects. It is much more worthy and more becoming to exercise
ourselves in things that strengthen than that weaken our government and
that tend to the public safety and common glory. The consul, Publius
Rutilius, was the first who taught the soldiers to handle their arms
with skill, and joined art with valour, not for the rise of private
quarrel, but for war and the quarrels of the people of Rome; a popular
and civil defence. And besides the example of Caesar, who commanded his
men to shoot chiefly at the face of Pompey’s soldiers in the battle of
Pharsalia, a thousand other commanders have also bethought them to invent
new forms of weapons and new ways of striking and defending, according as
occasion should require.
But as Philopoemen condemned wrestling, wherein he excelled, because the
preparatives that were therein employed were differing from those that
appertain to military discipline, to which alone he conceived men of
honour ought wholly to apply themselves; so it seems to me that this
address to which we form our limbs, those writhings and motions young men
are taught in this new school, are not only of no use, but rather
contrary and hurtful to the practice of fight in battle; and also our
people commonly make use of particular weapons, and peculiarly designed
for duel; and I have seen, when it has been disapproved, that a gentleman
challenged to fight with rapier and poignard appeared in the array of a
man-at-arms, and that another should take his cloak instead of his
poignard. It is worthy of consideration that Laches in Plato, speaking
of learning to fence after our manner, says that he never knew any great
soldier come out of that school, especially the masters of it: and,
indeed, as to them, our experience tells as much. As to the rest, we may
at least conclude that they are qualities of no relation or
correspondence; and in the education of the children of his government,
Plato interdicts the art of boxing, introduced by Amycus and Epeius, and
that of wrestling, by Antaeus and Cercyo, because they have another end
than to render youth fit for the service of war and contribute nothing to
it. But I see that I have somewhat strayed from my theme.
The Emperor Mauricius, being advertised by dreams and several
prognostics, that one Phocas, an obscure soldier, should kill him,
questioned his son-in-law, Philip, who this Phocas was, and what were his
nature, qualities, and manners; and so soon as Philip, amongst other
things, had told him that he was cowardly and timorous, the emperor
immediately concluded then that he was a murderer and cruel. What is it
that makes tyrants so sanguinary? ‘Tis only the solicitude for their own
safety, and that their faint hearts can furnish them with no other means
of securing themselves than in exterminating those who may hurt them,
even so much as women, for fear of a scratch:
“Cuncta ferit, dum cuncta timer.”
[“He strikes at all who fears all.”
--Claudius, in Eutrop., i. 182.]
The first cruelties are exercised for themselves thence springs the fear
of a just revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties,
to obliterate one another. Philip, king of Macedon, who had so much to
do with the people of Rome, agitated with the horror of so many murders
committed by his order, and doubting of being able to keep himself secure
from so many families, at divers times mortally injured and offended by
him, resolved to seize all the children of those he had caused to be
slain, to despatch them daily one after another, and so to establish his
own repose.
Fine matter is never impertinent, however placed; and therefore I, who
more consider the weight and utility of what I deliver than its order and
connection, need not fear in this place to bring in an excellent story,
though it be a little by-the-by; for when they are rich in their own
native beauty, and are able to justify themselves, the least end of a
hair will serve to draw them into my discourse.
Amongst others condemned by Philip, had been one Herodicus, prince of
Thessaly; he had, moreover, after him caused his two sons-in-law to be
put to death, each leaving a son very young behind him. Theoxena and
Archo were their two widows. Theoxena, though highly courted to it,
could not be persuaded to marry again: Archo married Poris, the greatest
man among the AEnians, and by him had a great many children, whom she,
dying, left at a very tender age. Theoxena, moved with a maternal
charity towards her nephews, that she might have them under her own eyes
and in her own protection, married Poris: when presently comes a
proclamation of the king’s edict. This brave-spirited mother, suspecting
the cruelty of Philip, and afraid of the insolence of the soldiers
towards these charming and tender children was so bold as to declare hat
she would rather kill them with her own hands than deliver them. Poris,
startled at this protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to
transport them to Athens, and there commit them to the custody of some
faithful friends of his. They took, therefore, the opportunity of an
annual feast which was celebrated at AEnia in honour of AEneas, and
thither they went. Having appeared by day at the public ceremonies and
banquet, they stole the night following into a vessel laid ready for the
purpose, to escape away by sea. The wind proved contrary, and finding
themselves in the morning within sight of the land whence they had
launched overnight, and being pursued by the guards of the port, Poris
perceiving this, laboured all he could to make the mariners do their
utmost to escape from the pursuers. But Theoxena, frantic with affection
and revenge, in pursuance of her former resolution, prepared both weapons
and poison, and exposing them before them; “Go to, my children,” said
she, “death is now the only means of your defence and liberty, and shall
administer occasion to the gods to exercise their sacred justice: these
sharp swords, and these full cups, will open you the way into it;
courage, fear nothing! And thou, my son, who art the eldest, take this
steel into thy hand, that thou mayest the more bravely die.” The
children having on one side so powerful a counsellor, and the enemy at
their throats on the other, run all of them eagerly upon what was next to
hand; and, half dead, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, proud of
having so gloriously provided for the safety of her children, clasping
her arms with great affection about her husband’s neck. “Let us, my
friend,” said she, “follow these boys, and enjoy the same sepulchre they
do”; and so, having embraced, they threw themselves headlong into the
sea; so that the ship was carried--back without the owners into the
harbour.
Tyrants, at once both to kill and to make their anger felt, have employed
their capacity to invent the most lingering deaths. They will have their
enemies despatched, but not so fast that they may not have leisure to
taste their vengeance. And therein they are mightily perplexed; for if
the torments they inflict are violent, they are short; if long, they are
not then so painful as they desire; and thus plague themselves in choice
of the greatest cruelty. Of this we have a thousand examples in
antiquity, and I know not whether we, unawares, do not retain some traces
of this barbarity.
All that exceeds a simple death appears to me absolute cruelty. Our
justice cannot expect that he, whom the fear of dying by being beheaded
or hanged will not restrain, should be any more awed by the imagination
of a languishing fire, pincers, or the wheel. And I know not, in the
meantime, whether we do not throw them into despair; for in what
condition can be the soul of a man, expecting four-and-twenty hours
together to be broken upon a wheel, or after the old way, nailed to a
cross? Josephus relates that in the time of the war the Romans made in
Judaea, happening to pass by where they had three days before crucified
certain Jews, he amongst them knew three of his own friends, and obtained
the favour of having them taken down, of whom two, he says, died; the
third lived a great while after.
Chalcondylas, a writer of good credit, in the records he has left behind
him of things that happened in his time, and near him, tells us, as of
the most excessive torment, of that the Emperor Mohammed very often
practised, of cutting off men in the middle by the diaphragm with one
blow of a scimitar, whence it followed that they died as it were two
deaths at once; and both the one part, says he, and the other, were seen
to stir and strive a great while after in very great torment. I do not
think there was any great suffering in this motion the torments that are
the most dreadful to look on are not always the greatest to endure; and I
find those that other historians relate to have been practised by him
upon the Epirot lords, are more horrid and cruel, where they were
condemned to be flayed alive piecemeal, after so malicious a manner that
they continued fifteen days in that misery.
And these other two: Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of
his brother Pantaleon, to be seized, carried him into a fuller’s shop,
where he caused him to be scratched and carded with the cards and combs
belonging to that trade, till he died. George Sechel, chief commander of
the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title
of the Crusade, being defeated in battle and taken bu the Vayvode of
Transylvania, was three days bound naked upon the rack exposed to all
sorts of torments that any one could contrive against him: during which
time many other prisoners were kept fasting; in the end, he living and
looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for whom alone he
entreated, taking on himself the blame of all their evil actions drink
his blood, and caused twenty of his most favoured captains to feed upon
him, tearing his flesh in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the
morsels. The remainder of his body and his bowels, so soon as he was
dead, were boiled, and others of his followers compelled to eat them.


CHAPTER XXVIII
ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON
Such as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato, who killed
himself, compare two beautiful natures, much resembling one another.
The first acquired his reputation several ways, and excels in military
exploits and the utility of his public employments; but the virtue of the
younger, besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to it in vigour,
was much more pure and unblemished. For who could absolve that of the
Censor from envy and ambition, having dared to attack the honour of
Scipio, a man in goodness and all other excellent qualities infinitely
beyond him or any other of his time?
That which they, report of him, amongst other things, that in his extreme
old age he put himself upon learning the Greek tongue with so greedy an
appetite, as if to quench a long thirst, does not seem to me to make much
for his honour; it being properly what we call falling into second
childhood. All things have their seasons, even good ones, and I may say
my Paternoster out of time; as they accused T. Quintus Flaminius, that
being general of an army, he was seen praying apart in the time of a
battle that he won.
“Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis.”
[“The wise man limits even honest things.”--Juvenal, vi. 444]
Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates when very old, still very intent upon his
school lectures: “When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet
learning?” And Philopaemen, to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every
day inuring his person to the exercise of arms: “It is not,” said he,
“commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in these things; he
ought now really to employ them.” The young are to make their
preparations, the old to enjoy them, say the sages: and the greatest vice
they observe in us is that our desires incessantly grow young again; we
are always re-beginning to live.
Our studies and desires should sometime be sensible of age; yet we have
one foot in the grave and still our appetites and pursuits spring every
day anew within us:
“Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus, et, sepulcri
Immemor, struis domos.”
[“You against the time of death have marble cut for use, and,
forgetful of the tomb, build houses.”--Horace, Od., ii. 18, 17.]
The longest of my designs is not of above a year’s extent; I think of
nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new hopes and enterprises; take
my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess
myself of what I have.
“Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur....
plus superest viatici quam viae.”
[“Henceforward I will neither lose, nor expect to get: I have more
wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go.” (Or):
“Hitherto nothing of me has been lost or gained; more remains to pay
the way than there is way.”--Seneca, Ep., 77. (The sense seems to
be that so far he had met his expenses, but that for the future he
was likely to have more than he required.)]
“Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.”
[“I have lived and finished the career Fortune placed before me.”
--AEneid, iv. 653.]
‘Tis indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it mortifies in
me several cares and desires wherewith my life has been disturbed; the
care how the world goes, the care of riches, of grandeur, of knowledge,
of health, of myself. There are men who are learning to speak at a time
when they should learn to be silent for ever. A man may always study,
but he must not always go to school what a contemptible thing is an old
Abecedarian!--[Seneca, Ep. 36]
“Diversos diversa juvant; non omnibus annis
Omnia conveniunt.”
[“Various things delight various men; all things are not
for all ages.”--Gall., Eleg., i. 104.]
If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present condition,
that we may answer as he did, who being asked to what end he studied in
his decrepit age, “that I may go out better,” said he, “and at greater
ease.” Such a study was that of the younger Cato, feeling his end
approach, and which he met with in Plato’s Discourse of the Eternity of
the Soul: not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before
furnished with all sorts of provision for such a departure; for of
assurance, an established will and instruction, he had more than Plato
had in all his writings; his knowledge and courage were in this respect
above philosophy; he applied himself to this study, not for the service
of his death; but, as a man whose sleeps were never disturbed in the
importance of such a deliberation, he also, without choice or change,
continued his studies with the other accustomary actions of his life.
The night that he was denied the praetorship he spent in play; that
wherein he was to die he spent in reading. The loss either of life
or of office was all one to him.


CHAPTER XXIX
OF VIRTUE
I find by experience, that there is a good deal to be said betwixt the
flights and emotions of the soul or a resolute and constant habit; and
very well perceive that there is nothing we may not do, nay, even to the
surpassing the Divinity itself, says a certain person, forasmuch as it is
more to render a man’s self impassible by his own study and industry,
than to be so by his natural condition; and even to be able to conjoin to
man’s imbecility and frailty a God-like resolution and assurance; but it
is by fits and starts; and in the lives of those heroes of times past
there are sometimes miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to
exceed our natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and ‘tis
hard to believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man can so
thoroughly tinct and imbue the soul that they should become ordinary,
and, as it were, natural in him. It accidentally happens even to us,
who are but abortive births of men, sometimes to launch our souls, when
roused by the discourses or examples of others, much beyond their
ordinary stretch; but ‘tis a kind of passion which pushes and agitates
them, and in some sort ravishes them from themselves: but, this
perturbation once overcome, we see that they insensibly flag and slacken
of themselves, if not to the lowest degree, at least so as to be no more
the same; insomuch as that upon every trivial occasion, the losing of a
bird, or the breaking, of a glass, we suffer ourselves to be moved little
less than one of the common people. I am of opinion, that order,
moderation, and constancy excepted, all things are to be done by a man
that is very imperfect and defective in general. Therefore it is, say
the Sages, that to make a right judgment of a man, you are chiefly to pry
into his common actions, and surprise him in his everyday habit.
Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a knowledge upon ignorance,
endeavoured, as all the rest who were really philosophers did, to make
his life correspond with his doctrine. And because he maintained the
imbecility of human judgment to be so extreme as to be incapable of any
choice or inclination, and would have it perpetually wavering and
suspended, considering and receiving all things as indifferent, ‘tis
said, that he always comforted himself after the same manner and
countenance: if he had begun a discourse, he would always end what he had
to say, though the person he was speaking to had gone away: if he walked,
he never stopped for any impediment that stood in his way, being
preserved from precipices, collision with carts, and other like
accidents, by the care of his friends: for, to fear or to avoid anything,
had been to shock his own propositions, which deprived the senses
themselves of all election and certainty. Sometimes he suffered incision
and cauteries with so great constancy as never to be seen so much as to
wince. ‘Tis something to bring the soul to these imaginations; ‘tis more
to join the effects, and yet not impossible; but to conjoin them with
such perseverance and constancy as to make them habitual, is certainly,
in attempts so remote from the common usage, almost incredible to be
done. Therefore it was, that being sometime taken in his house sharply
scolding with his sister, and being reproached that he therein
transgressed his own rules of indifference: “What!” said he, “must this
bit of a woman also serve for a testimony to my rules?” Another time,
being seen to defend himself against a dog: “It is,” said he, “very hard
totally to put off man; and we must endeavour and force ourselves to
resist and encounter things, first by effects, but at least by reason and
argument.”
About seven or eight years since, a husbandman yet living, but two
leagues from my house, having long been tormented with his wife’s
jealousy, coming one day home from his work, and she welcoming him with
her accustomed railing, entered into so great fury that with a sickle he
had yet in his hand, he totally cut off all those parts that she was
jealous of and threw them in her face. And, ‘tis said that a young
gentleman of our nation, brisk and amorous, having by his perseverance at
last mollified the heart of a fair mistress, enraged, that upon the point
of fruition he found himself unable to perform, and that,
“Nec viriliter
Iners senile penis extulit caput.”
[(The 19th or 20th century translators leave this phrase
untranslated and with no explanation. D.W.)
--Tibullus, Priap. Carm., 84.]
as soon as ever he came home he deprived himself of the rebellious
member, and sent it to his mistress, a cruel and bloody victim for the
expiation of his offence. If this had been done upon mature
consideration, and upon the account of religion, as the priests of Cybele
did, what should we say of so high an action?
A few days since, at Bergerac, five leagues from my house, up the river
Dordogne, a woman having overnight been beaten and abused by her husband,
a choleric ill-conditioned fellow, resolved to escape from his ill-usage
at the price of her life; and going so soon as she was up the next
morning to visit her neighbours, as she was wont to do, and having let
some words fall in recommendation of her affairs, she took a sister of
hers by the hand, and led her to the bridge; whither being come, and
having taken leave of her, in jest as it were, without any manner of
alteration in her countenance, she threw herself headlong from the top
into the river, and was there drowned. That which is the most remarkable
in this is, that this resolution was a whole night forming in her head.
It is quite another thing with the Indian women for it being the custom
there for the men to have many wives, and the best beloved of them to
kill herself at her husband’s decease, every one of them makes it the
business of her whole life to obtain this privilege and gain this
advantage over her companions; and the good offices they do their
husbands aim at no other recompense but to be preferred in accompanying
him in death:
“Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto,
Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis
Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur
Conjugium: pudor est non licuisse mori.
Ardent victrices, et flammae pectora praebent,
Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris.”
[“For when they threw the torch on the funeral bed, the pious wives
with hair dishevelled, stand around striving, which, living, shall
accompany her spouse; and are ashamed that they may not die; they
who are preferred expose their breasts to the flame, and they lay
their scorched lips on those of their husbands.”
--Propertius, iii. 13, 17.]
A certain author of our times reports that he has seen in those Oriental
nations this custom in practice, that not only the wives bury themselves
with their husbands, but even the slaves he has enjoyed also; which is
done after this manner: The husband being dead, the widow may if she will
(but few will) demand two or three months’ respite wherein to order her
affairs. The day being come, she mounts on horseback, dressed as fine as
at her wedding, and with a cheerful countenance says she is going to
sleep with her spouse, holding a looking-glass in her left hand and an
arrow in the other. Being thus conducted in pomp, accompanied with her
kindred and friends and a great concourse of people in great joy, she is
at last brought to the public place appointed for such spectacles: this
is a great space, in the midst of which is a pit full of wood, and
adjoining to it a mount raised four or five steps, upon which she is
brought and served with a magnificent repast; which being done, she falls
to dancing and singing, and gives order, when she thinks fit, to kindle
the fire. This being done, she descends, and taking the nearest of her
husband’s relations by the hand, they walk to the river close by, where
she strips herself stark naked, and having distributed her clothes and
jewels to her friends, plunges herself into the water, as if there to
cleanse herself from her sins; coming out thence, she wraps herself in a
yellow linen of five-and-twenty ells long, and again giving her hand to
this kinsman of her husband’s, they return back to the mount, where she
makes a speech to the people, and recommends her children to them, if she
have any. Betwixt the pit and the mount there is commonly a curtain