How To Live Or A Life Of Montaigne Part 10

Adder, stay; stay, adder, that from the pattern of your coloring my sister may draw the fashion and the workmanship of a rich girdle that I may give to my love; so may your beauty and your pattern be forever preferred to all other serpents.

Montaigne liked the simple elegance of this, by contrast with the over-refined European versifying of his day. In another essay, he wrote that such "purely natural poetry"-among which he counted the traditional villanelles of his own Guyenne as well as the songs brought back from the New World-rivaled the finest found in books. Even the cla.s.sical poets could not compete.

Montaigne's "cannibal love song" went on to have an impressive little afterlife of its own, independent of the rest of the Essays Essays. Chateaubriand borrowed it for his Memoires d'outre-tombe Memoires d'outre-tombe, where he had an attractive North American girl sing something similar. It then migrated to Germany, where it flourished as a Lied Lied throughout the eighteenth century-this in a country which otherwise took little early interest in Montaigne. The two cannibal songs, together with some complimentary remarks about German stoves, were the only fragments of Montaignalia to make much impact at all in that part of the world until Nietzsche's time. "Adder, Stay" was translated by some of the best German Romantic poets: Ewald Christian von Kleist, Johann Gottfried Herder, and the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself-who produced both a throughout the eighteenth century-this in a country which otherwise took little early interest in Montaigne. The two cannibal songs, together with some complimentary remarks about German stoves, were the only fragments of Montaignalia to make much impact at all in that part of the world until Nietzsche's time. "Adder, Stay" was translated by some of the best German Romantic poets: Ewald Christian von Kleist, Johann Gottfried Herder, and the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself-who produced both a Liebeslied eines Amerikanischen Wilden Liebeslied eines Amerikanischen Wilden ("Love Song of an American Savage") and a ("Love Song of an American Savage") and a Todeslied eines Gefangenen Todeslied eines Gefangenen ("Death Song of a Prisoner"). German Romantics especially favored songs about love and death, so it is not surprising that they took so eagerly to Montaigne's transcriptions. What is striking is that they seized them from the text while ignoring almost everything else-but this is what all readers do, to a greater or lesser extent. ("Death Song of a Prisoner"). German Romantics especially favored songs about love and death, so it is not surprising that they took so eagerly to Montaigne's transcriptions. What is striking is that they seized them from the text while ignoring almost everything else-but this is what all readers do, to a greater or lesser extent.

Montaigne, like Lery, could be accused of romanticizing the peoples of the New World. But he understood too much about the complexity of human psychology to really want to wipe half of it out in order to live like wild fruit. He also recognized that American cultures could be just as stupid and cruel as European ones. Since cruelty was the vice he deplored most, it is significant that he made no attempt to gloss over its role in New World religions, some of which were bloodthirsty indeed. "They burn the victims alive, and take them out of the brazier half roasted to tear their entrails out. Others, even women, are flayed alive, and with their b.l.o.o.d.y skins they dress and disguise others."

He described such atrocities, but then pointed out that they seemed excessive mainly because Europeans were unfamiliar with them. Equally terrible practices were accepted nearer home, because of the power of habit. "I am not sorry that we notice the barbarous horror of such acts," he wrote of the New World sacrifices, "but I am heartily sorry that, judging their faults rightly, we should be so blind to our own." Montaigne wanted his readers to open their eyes and see see. The peoples of South America were not just fascinating for their own sake. They made an ideal mirror, in which Montaigne and his countrymen could "recognize themselves from the proper angle," and which woke them out of their self-satisfied dream.

n.o.bLE SAVAGES.

Eighteenth-century German readers may have found little of interest in Montaigne other than his Volkslieder Volkslieder, but a new generation of French readers rediscovering him in the same period made more of his cannibals and mirrors than even Montaigne himself could have antic.i.p.ated.

They were encouraged in this by a sleek modern edition which appeared in 1724. The Essays Essays were still outlawed in France-it had been fifty years since the ban-but now the country began receiving a stream of smuggled Montaigne texts from England, where the French Protestant exile Pierre Coste had put together an edition for the new century. Coste deliberately brought out Montaigne's subversive side, not by interfering with the text but by adding extra paraphernalia, most dramatically La Boetie's were still outlawed in France-it had been fifty years since the ban-but now the country began receiving a stream of smuggled Montaigne texts from England, where the French Protestant exile Pierre Coste had put together an edition for the new century. Coste deliberately brought out Montaigne's subversive side, not by interfering with the text but by adding extra paraphernalia, most dramatically La Boetie's On Voluntary Servitude On Voluntary Servitude, which he included in full with the edition of 1727. This was the first time the Voluntary Servitude Voluntary Servitude had been published at all since the Protestant tracts of the sixteenth century, and certainly the first time it had appeared joined to the had been published at all since the Protestant tracts of the sixteenth century, and certainly the first time it had appeared joined to the Essays Essays. It altered Montaigne by a.s.sociation, and gave him the aura of a political and personal rebel, the sort of writer whose calm philosophy might conceal more turbulent meanings. Coste helped to create a version of Montaigne still popular today: a secret radical, who conceals himself under a veil of discretion. In particular, Coste's edition made Montaigne look like a free-thinking Enlightenment philosophe philosophe born two centuries too early. Eighteenth-century readers recognized themselves in him, as so many do, and they felt amazed that he had needed to wait so long before meeting the generation truly capable of understanding him. born two centuries too early. Eighteenth-century readers recognized themselves in him, as so many do, and they felt amazed that he had needed to wait so long before meeting the generation truly capable of understanding him.

This new breed of "enlightened" reader responded pa.s.sionately to his portrayal of the courageous Tupinamba. Montaigne's cannibal Stoics aligned themselved with a new fantasy figure: that of the n.o.ble savage, an impossibly perfect being who united primitive simplicity with cla.s.sical heroism, and who now became the object of a cult. Adherents of the cult kept hold of Montaigne's sense that cannibals had their own sense of honor, and that they held up a mirror to European civilization. What they lost was Montaigne's understanding that "savages" were also as flawed, cruel, and barbarous as anyone else.

Among the writers to fall upon Montaigne's Tupinamba with delight was Denis Diderot, a philosopher who became famous for his contributions to the era's monumental compilation of knowledge, the Encyclopedie Encyclopedie, as well as for countless philosophical novels and dialogues. Diderot read Montaigne early in his career, loved him, and paid him the compliment of quoting the Essays Essays in his own writings-usually, but not always, with due credit. In his short in his own writings-usually, but not always, with due credit. In his short Supplement au voyage de Bougainville Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, of 1796, Diderot wrote excitedly about the peoples of the South Pacific, recently encountered by Europeans, and thus his century's equivalent to native Americans in Montaigne's time. Like the Tupinamba, Pacific islanders seemed to lead a simple life, almost in a state of grace. Less palatable aspects of their culture were easy to ignore, because Europe knew little about them. This left plenty of room to make things up, notably the idea that the islanders enjoyed hedonistic s.e.x with anyone they liked at any time. In the Supplement Supplement, Diderot had one of his Tahitian characters advise Europeans that they need only follow nature to be happy, for no other law applied. This was what his compatriots wanted to hear.

The n.o.ble savage was raised to a more exalted level by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, another writer influenced by Montaigne-his annotated copy of the Essays Essays survives. Unlike Diderot, Rousseau took primitive society to be something so perfect that it could not actually exist in any real part of the world, not even the Pacific. It functioned only as an ideal contrast to the mess that real societies had become. By definition, all existing civilization was corrupt. survives. Unlike Diderot, Rousseau took primitive society to be something so perfect that it could not actually exist in any real part of the world, not even the Pacific. It functioned only as an ideal contrast to the mess that real societies had become. By definition, all existing civilization was corrupt.

In his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau imagines what man might have been like without the chains of civilization. "I see an animal...eating his fill under an oak tree, quenching his thirst at the first stream, making his bed at the base of the same tree that supplied his meal." The earth gives this natural man everything he needs. It does not pamper him, but he needs no pampering. Harsh conditions from infancy have made him resistant to illness, and he is strong enough to fight off wild beasts unarmed. He has no axes, but he uses his muscles to break thick branches unaided. He has no slingshots or guns, but he can throw a stone powerfully enough to bring down any prey. He needs no horses, for he can run as fast as one. Only when civilization makes man "sociable and a slave" does he lose his manliness, learning to be weak and to fear everything around him. He also learns despair: no one ever heard of a "free savage" killing himself, says Rousseau. He even loses his natural tendency to be compa.s.sionate. If someone slits a person's throat under a philosopher's window, the philosopher is likely to put his hands over his ears and pretend not to hear; a savage would never do this. A natural man could not fail to heed the voice within that makes him identify with his fellows-a voice that sounds very much like the one which calls Montaigne to feel sympathy for all suffering fellow beings.

If one reverses chronology and imagines Montaigne settling down in his armchair to read Rousseau, it is intriguing to wonder how far he would have followed this before tossing the book from him. In the early stages of this pa.s.sage, he might have felt enchanted; here was a writer with whom he was in perfect harmony. A few paragraphs later, one imagines him faltering and frowning. "Though I don't know..." he might murmur, as the wave of Rousseau's rhetoric keeps swelling. Montaigne would want to pause and examine it all from alternative angles. Does society really make us callous? he would ask. Are we not better in company? Is man really born free; is he not filled with weaknesses and imperfections from the start? Do sociability and slavery go together? And by the way, could anyone really throw a stone powerfully enough to kill something at a distance without a slingshot?

Rousseau never stops or reverses direction. He sweeps along, and sweeps many readers with him too: he became the most popular author of his day. Reading a few pages of Rousseau makes one realize just how different he is from Montaigne, even when the latter seems to have been a source for his ideas. Montaigne is saved from flights of primitivist fantasy by his tendency to step aside from whatever he says even as he is saying it. His "though I don't know" always intervenes. Moreover, his overall purpose is different from Rousseau's. He does not want to show that modern civilization is corrupt, but that all human perspectives perspectives on the world are corrupt and partial by nature. This applies to the Tupinamba visitors, gazing at the French in Rouen, just as much as to Lery or Thevet in Brazil. The only hope of emerging from the fog of misinterpretation is to remain alert to its existence: that is, to become wise at one's own expense. But even this only provides an imperfect solution. We can never escape our limitations altogether. on the world are corrupt and partial by nature. This applies to the Tupinamba visitors, gazing at the French in Rouen, just as much as to Lery or Thevet in Brazil. The only hope of emerging from the fog of misinterpretation is to remain alert to its existence: that is, to become wise at one's own expense. But even this only provides an imperfect solution. We can never escape our limitations altogether.

Writers like Diderot and Rousseau were drawn not only to the "cannibal" Montaigne, but to all the pa.s.sages in which he wrote of simple and natural ways of life. The book in which Rousseau seems to have borrowed most from the Essays Essays is is emile emile, a hugely successful pedagogical novel which changed the lives of a whole generation of fashionably educated children by promoting a "natural" upbringing. Parents and tutors should bring up children gently, he suggested, letting them learn about the world by following their own curiosity while surrounding them with opportunities for travel, conversation, and experience. At the same time, like little Stoics, they should also be inured to tough physical conditions. This is clearly traceable to Montaigne's essay on education, although Rousseau mentions Montaigne only occasionally in the book, usually to attack him.

He insults Montaigne again at the outset of his autobiography, the Confessions Confessions-a work which might be thought to owe something to Montaigne's project of self-portraiture. In his original preface (often omitted in later editions), Rousseau wards off such accusations by writing, "I place Montaigne foremost among those dissemblers who mean to deceive by telling the truth. He portrays himself with defects, but he gives himself only lovable ones." If Montaigne, misleads the reader, then it is not he but Rousseau who is the first person in history to write an honest and full account of himself. This frees Rousseau to say, of his own book, "This is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and will probably ever exist."

The works do differ, and not just because the Confessions Confessions is a narrative, tracing a life from childhood on rather than capturing everything at once as the is a narrative, tracing a life from childhood on rather than capturing everything at once as the Essays Essays does. There is also a difference of purpose. Rousseau wrote the book because he considered himself so exceptional, both in brilliance and sometimes in wickedness, that he wanted to capture himself before this unique combination of features was lost to the world. does. There is also a difference of purpose. Rousseau wrote the book because he considered himself so exceptional, both in brilliance and sometimes in wickedness, that he wanted to capture himself before this unique combination of features was lost to the world.

I know men. I am not made like any that I have seen; I venture to believe that I was not made like any that exist...As to whether Nature did well or ill to break the mold in which I was cast, that is something no one can judge until after they have read me.

Montaigne, by contrast, saw himself as a thoroughly ordinary man in every respect, except for his unusual habit of writing things down. He "bears the entire form of the human condition," as everyone does, and is therefore happy to cast himself as a mirror for others-the same role he bestows on the Tupinamba. That is the whole point of the Essays Essays. If no one could recognize themselves in him, why would anyone read him?

Some contemporaries noticed suspicious similarities between Rousseau and Montaigne. Rousseau was overtly accused of theft: a tract by Dom Joseph Cajot, bluntly called Rousseau's Plagiarisms on Education Rousseau's Plagiarisms on Education, opined that the only difference was that Montaigne gushed less than Rousseau and was more concise-surely the only time the latter quality has ever been attributed to Montaigne. Another critic, Nicolas Bricaire de la Dixmerie, invented a dialogue in which Rousseau admits to having copied ideas from Montaigne, but argues that they have nothing in common because he writes "in inspiration" while Montaigne writes "coldly."

Rousseau lived in an era when gushing, inspiration, and heat were admired. They meant, precisely, that you were in touch with "Nature," rather than being a slave to the frigid requirements of civilization. You were savage and sincere; you had cannibal chic.

Eighteenth-century readers who embraced Montaigne for his praise of the Tupinamba, and for all his writings on nature, were gradually blossoming into full Romantics-a breed who would dominate the late years of that century and the early years of the following one. And Montaigne would never be quite the same again once the Romantics had finished with him.

From its beginning in the form of a mildly rebellious, open-minded answer to the question of living well, "Wake from the sleep of habit" gradually metamorphosed into something much more rabble-rousing and even revolutionary. After Romanticism, it would no longer be easy to see Montaigne as a cool, gracious source of h.e.l.lenistic wisdom. From now on, readers would persist in trying to warm him up. He would, for evermore, have a wild side.

11. Q. How to live? A. Live temperately

RAISING AND LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE.

IN MANY WAYS, readers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries found it easy to like the Montaigne they constructed for themselves. As well as appreciating his praise for the Americans, they responded to his openness about himself, his willingness to explore the contradictions of his character, his disregard for convention, and his desire to break out of fossilized habits. They liked his interest in psychology, especially his sense of the way different impulses could coexist in a single mind. Also-and they were the first generation of readers to feel this way in great numbers-they enjoyed his writing style, with all its exuberant disorder. They liked the way he seemed to blurt out whatever was on his mind at any moment, without pausing to set it into neat array.

Romantic readers were particularly taken by Montaigne's intense feeling for La Boetie, because it was the only place where he showed strong emotion. The tragic ending of the love story, with La Boetie's death, made it more beautiful. Montaigne's simple answer to the question of why they loved each other-"Because it was he, because it was I"-became a catchphrase, denoting the transcendent mystery in all human attraction.

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In her autobiography, the Romantic writer George Sand related how she became obsessed with Montaigne and La Boetie in her youth, as the prototype of spiritual friendship she herself longed to find-and did, in later life, with writer friends such as Flaubert and Balzac. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine felt similarly. In a letter, he wrote of Montaigne: "All that I admire in him is his friendship for La Boetie." He had already borrowed Montaigne's formula to describe his own feelings in an earlier letter to the same friend: "Because it is you, because it is I." He embraced Montaigne himself as such a companion, writing of "friend Montaigne, yes: friend."

The new highly charged or heated quality of such responses to Montaigne can be measured in the increase, during this era, in pilgrimages to his tower. Visitors called on the Montaigne estate, drawn by curiosity, but once there they lost their heads; they stood rapt in meditation, feeling Montaigne's spirit all around them like a living presence. Often, they felt almost as though they had become become him, for a few moments. him, for a few moments.

There had been little of this in previous centuries. Montaigne's descendants lived at the estate until 1811, and for most of this time no one interfered with them while they converted the ground floor of the tower into a potato store and the first-floor bedroom sometimes to a dog kennel, sometimes to a chicken coop. This changed only after a trickle of early Romantic visitors turned into a regular flow, until eventually the potatoes and chickens gave way to an organized re-creation of his working environment.

This all seemed self-explanatory to the Romantics. Naturally, if you responded to Montaigne's writing, you must want to be there in person: to gaze out of his window at the view he would have seen every day, or to hover behind the place where he might have sat to write, so you could look down and almost see his ghostly words appear before your eyes. Taking no account of the hubbub that would really have been going on in the courtyard below, and probably in his room too, you were free to imagine the tower as a monastic cell, which Montaigne inhabited like a hermit. "Let us hasten to cross the threshold," wrote one early visitor, Charles Compan, of the tower library: If your heart beats like mine with an indescribable emotion; if the memory of a great man inspires in you this deep veneration which one cannot refuse to the benefactors of humanity-enter.

The pilgrimage tradition outlived the Romantic era proper. When the marquis de Gaillon wrote of his visit to the tower in 1862, he summoned up the pain of departure in lover's language: But at last one must leave this library, this room, this dear tower. Farewell, Montaigne! for to leave this place is to be separated from you.

The problem with all such pa.s.sionate swooning into Montaigne's arms has always been Montaigne himself. To fantasize about him in this way is to set oneself at odds with his own way of doing things. Blocking out parts of the Essays Essays that interfere with one's chosen interpretation is a timeless activity, but the hot-blooded Romantics had a harder task than most. They were constantly brought up against things like this: that interfere with one's chosen interpretation is a timeless activity, but the hot-blooded Romantics had a harder task than most. They were constantly brought up against things like this: I have no great experience of these vehement agitations, being of an indolent and sluggish disposition.I like temperate and moderate natures.My excesses do not carry me very far away. There is nothing extreme or strange about them.The most beautiful lives, to my mind, are those that conform to the common human pattern, with order, but without miracle and without eccentricity.

The poet Alphonse de Lamartine was one such frustrated reader. When he first came across Montaigne he hero-worshiped him, and kept a volume of the Essays Essays always in his pocket or on his table so he could seize it whenever he had the urge. But later he turned against his idol with equal vehemence: Montaigne, he now decided, knew nothing of the real miseries of life. He explained to a correspondent that he had only been able to love the always in his pocket or on his table so he could seize it whenever he had the urge. But later he turned against his idol with equal vehemence: Montaigne, he now decided, knew nothing of the real miseries of life. He explained to a correspondent that he had only been able to love the Essays Essays when he was young-that is, about nine months earlier, when he first began to enthuse about the book in his letters. Now, at twenty-one, he had been weathered by pain, and found Montaigne too cool and measured. Perhaps, he wondered, he might return to Montaigne many years later, in old age, when even more suffering had dried his heart. For now, the essayist's sense of moderation made him feel positively ill. when he was young-that is, about nine months earlier, when he first began to enthuse about the book in his letters. Now, at twenty-one, he had been weathered by pain, and found Montaigne too cool and measured. Perhaps, he wondered, he might return to Montaigne many years later, in old age, when even more suffering had dried his heart. For now, the essayist's sense of moderation made him feel positively ill.

George Sand also wrote that she was "not Montaigne's disciple" when it came to his Stoical or Skeptical "indifference"-his equilibrium or ataraxia ataraxia, a goal that had now gone out of fashion. She had loved his friendship with La Boetie, as the one sign of warmth, but it was not enough and she tired of him.

The worst sticking-point for Romantic readers was a pa.s.sage in which Montaigne described visiting the famous poet Torquato Ta.s.so in Ferrara, on his Italian travels in 1580. Ta.s.so's most celebrated work, the epic Gerusalemme liberata Gerusalemme liberata, enjoyed immense success on its publication that same year, but the poet himself had lost his mind and was confined to a madhouse, where he lived in atrocious conditions surrounded by distressed lunatics. Pa.s.sing through Ferrara, Montaigne called on him, and was horrified by the encounter. He felt sympathy, but suspected that Ta.s.so had driven himself into this condition by spending too long in states of poetic ecstasy. The radiance of his inspiration had brought him to unreason: he had let himself be "blinded by the light." Seeing genius reduced to idiocy saddened Montaigne. Worse, it irritated him. What a waste, to destroy oneself in this way! He was aware that writing poetry required a certain "frenzy," but what was the point of becoming so frenzied that one could never write again? "The archer who overshoots the target misses as much as the one who does not reach it."

Looking back at two such different writers as Montaigne and Ta.s.so, and admiring both, Romantics were prepared to go along with Montaigne's belief that Ta.s.so had blown his own mind with poetry. They could understand Montaigne's sadness about it. What they could neither understand nor forgive was his irritation. Romantics did blinding brilliance; they did melancholy; they did intense imaginative identification. They did not do irritation.

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Montaigne is obviously "no poet," spat one such reader, Philarete Chasles. Jules Lefevre-Deumier deplored what he saw as Montaigne's "stoic indifference" to another man's sufferings-which seems a misreading of Montaigne's pa.s.sage about Ta.s.so. The real problem was that Romantics took sides. They identified with Ta.s.so in this encounter, not with Montaigne, who represented the uncomprehending world they felt was always opposing them, too. As Nietzsche could have warned Montaigne: Moderation sees itself as beautiful; it is unaware that in the eye of the immoderate it appears black and sober, and consequently ugly-looking.

Actually, in this situation, it was Montaigne who was playing the rebel. By singing the praises of moderation and equanimity, and doubting the value of poetic excess, Montaigne was bucking the trend of his own time as much as that of the Romantics. Renaissance readers fetishized extreme states: ecstasy was the only state in which to write poetry, just as it was the only way to fight a battle and the only way to fall in love. In all three pursuits, Montaigne seems to have had an inner thermostat which switched him off as soon as the temperature rose beyond a certain point. This was why he so admired Epaminondas, the one cla.s.sical warrior who kept his head when the sound of clashing swords rang out, and why he valued friendship more than pa.s.sion. "Transcendental humors frighten me," he said. The qualities he valued were curiosity, sociability, kindness, fellow-feeling, adaptability, intelligent reflection, the ability to see things from another's point of view, and "goodwill"-none of which is compatible with the fiery furnace of inspiration.

Montaigne even went so far as to claim that true greatness of the soul is to be found "in mediocrity"-a shocking remark and even, paradoxically, an extreme one. Most moderns have been so trained to regard mediocrity as a poor, limited condition that it is hard to know what to think when he says this. Is he playing games with the reader again, as some suspect he does when he writes of having a bad memory and a slow intellect? Perhaps he is, to some extent, yet he seems to mean it too. Montaigne distrusts G.o.dlike ambitions. For him, people who try to rise above the human manage only to sink to the subhuman. Like Ta.s.so, they seek to transcend the limits, and instead lose their ordinary human faculties. Being truly human means behaving in a way that is not merely ordinary, but ordinate ordinate, a word the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary defines as "ordered, regulated; orderly, regular, moderate." It means living appropriately, or defines as "ordered, regulated; orderly, regular, moderate." It means living appropriately, or a propos a propos, so that one estimates things at their right value and behaves in the way correctly suited to each occasion. This is why, as Montaigne puts it, living appropriately is "our great and glorious masterpiece"-grandiose language, but used to describe a quality that is anything but grandiose. Mediocrity, for Montaigne, does not mean the dullness that comes from not bothering to think things through, or from lacking the imagination to see beyond one's own viewpoint. It means accepting that one is like everyone else, and that one carries the entire form of the human condition. This could not be further removed from Rousseau and his feeling that he is set apart from all humanity. For Montaigne: There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.

He knew, all the same, that human nature does not always conform to this wisdom. Alongside the wish to be happy, emotionally at peace and in full command of one's faculties, something else drives people periodically to smash their achievements to pieces. It is what Freud called the thanatos thanatos principle: the drive towards death and chaos. The twentieth-century author Rebecca West described it thus: principle: the drive towards death and chaos. The twentieth-century author Rebecca West described it thus: Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

West and Freud both had experience of war, and so did Montaigne: he could hardly fail to notice this side of humanity. His pa.s.sages about moderation and mediocrity must be read with one eye always to the French civil wars, in which transcendental extremism brought about subhuman cruelties on an overwhelming scale. The third "trouble" ended in August 1570, and a two-year peace ensued during the period when Montaigne lived on his estate and began work on the Essays Essays. But, long before he had finished that work, the peace came to an abrupt and shocking end, with an event that could leave no one in doubt about the dark side of human nature.

12. Q. How to live? A. Guard your humanity

TERROR.

LIKE EARLIER PEACE agreements, 1570's Treaty of Saint-Germain displeased everyone. Protestants, always wanting more, thought its terms did not go far enough, as it granted them limited freedom of worship. Catholics thought it went too far; they were anxious that Protestants would take any concessions at all as encouragement. They feared that Protestants would press for an all-out revolution against the legitimate Catholic monarch, and start another war. They were right about there being another war, but wrong about who would be responsible. agreements, 1570's Treaty of Saint-Germain displeased everyone. Protestants, always wanting more, thought its terms did not go far enough, as it granted them limited freedom of worship. Catholics thought it went too far; they were anxious that Protestants would take any concessions at all as encouragement. They feared that Protestants would press for an all-out revolution against the legitimate Catholic monarch, and start another war. They were right about there being another war, but wrong about who would be responsible.

Tensions kept rising, and reached a peak during celebrations held in Paris in August 1572 to mark a dynastic wedding between the Catholic Marguerite de Valois and the Protestant Henri de Navarre. The leaders of three main factions came to the ceremony in a grim mood: the moderate Catholic king Charles IX, the radical Protestant leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, and the extremist Catholic duc de Guise. Each faction was haunted by fear of the others. Inflammatory preachers raised the emotional temperature further among ordinary Parisians, urging them to rise up to prevent the wedding and wipe out the heretic leaders while they had the chance.

The marriage went ahead, on August 18, and four days of official festivities followed. No doubt many breathed a sigh of relief when they ended. But late on the final night, August 22, 1572, someone fired an arquebus at the Protestant leader Coligny as he walked back to his house from the Louvre palace, not killing him outright but breaking his arm.

News of the incident spread around town. The next morning, streams of Huguenots came to see Coligny, vowing revenge. Many of them believed (as most historians still do) that the king himself was behind the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, together with his mother Catherine de' Medici-the idea being to nip any potential Protestant rebellion in the bud by removing its leader. If true, this was a miscalculation on Charles's part. The attack on Coligny made Protestants angry. More dangerously still, it made Catholics fearful. Expecting Protestants to rise up in response to what had happened, they gathered around the city and prepared to defend themselves. The king was probably unnerved too, and may have reasoned that a dead rebel leader was less dangerous than a wounded one. Apparently on his orders, a royal guard broke into Coligny's house and finished the botched job by killing the injured man in his bed. This was early on the morning of Sunday, August 24: St. Bartholomew's Day.

The killers cut off Coligny's head and dispatched it to the royal palace; it would eventually be embalmed and sent to Rome for the Pope to admire. Meanwhile the rest of the body was thrown out of the window to the street, where a Catholic crowd set fire to it and dragged it around the district. The body fell to pieces as it smoldered, but segments were paraded about and further mutilated for days.

The commotion at Coligny's house caused further panic among Parisian Catholics as well as Protestants. Catholic gangs rushed onto the streets; they seized and killed any recognizable Protestants, and burst into houses where Protestants were known to live-and where many were sleeping peacefully, having no idea what was going on in the city. The mobs dragged them outside, slit their throats or tore them to pieces, then set fire to their bodies or threw them in the river. The mayhem attracted larger and larger crowds, and fueled further atrocities. To pick just one reported incident, a man named Mathurin Lussault was killed when he made the mistake of answering his door; his son came down to investigate the noise and was stabbed too. Lussault's wife, Francoise, tried to escape by leaping from her upstairs window into a neighbor's courtyard. She broke both her legs. The neighbor helped her, but the attackers burst in and dragged her into the street by her hair. They cut off her hands to get her gold bracelets, then impaled her on a spit; later they dumped her body in the river. The hands, chewed by dogs, were still to be seen outside the building several days later. Similar scenes took place all over the city, and so many bodies were thrown into the Seine that it was said to run red with blood.

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(ill.u.s.tration credit i12.1)

Whatever Charles had intended by the original a.s.sa.s.sination-if indeed he was responsible-he can hardly have intended this. He now ordered his soldiers to suppress the violence, but it was too late. The killing went on for nearly a week through the districts of Paris, then spread around the rest of the country. In Paris alone, the ma.s.sacres, which were known for ever more by the name of St. Bartholomew, left up to five thousand dead. By the end some ten thousand had been killed in France. Cities were sucked into the violence like fishing-boats into a tornado: Orleans, Lyon, Rouen, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and countless smaller towns.

It was a furor furor of the kind Montaigne detested even on a traditional battlefield, but here the victims were civilians. On the whole, so were the killers; only in a few places were soldiers or officials involved. Bordeaux was one of these few. Nothing happened there until October 3, but when it did, it was apparently organized and approved by the fanatical Catholic mayor of the time, Charles de Montferrand, who produced a formal list of targets to be attacked. In most places, the bloodshed was done more chaotically and by people who would have been reasonable folk the rest of the time. In Orleans, the mob stopped at taverns between killings to celebrate, "accompanied by singing, lutes and guitars," according to one historian. Some groups were composed mainly of women or children. Catholics interpreted the presence of the latter as a sign that G.o.d Himself was in favor of the ma.s.sacres, for He had caused even innocents to take part. In general, many thought that, since the killings were on no ordinary human scale, they must have been divinely sanctioned. They were not the result of human decisions; they were messages from G.o.d of the kind Montaigne detested even on a traditional battlefield, but here the victims were civilians. On the whole, so were the killers; only in a few places were soldiers or officials involved. Bordeaux was one of these few. Nothing happened there until October 3, but when it did, it was apparently organized and approved by the fanatical Catholic mayor of the time, Charles de Montferrand, who produced a formal list of targets to be attacked. In most places, the bloodshed was done more chaotically and by people who would have been reasonable folk the rest of the time. In Orleans, the mob stopped at taverns between killings to celebrate, "accompanied by singing, lutes and guitars," according to one historian. Some groups were composed mainly of women or children. Catholics interpreted the presence of the latter as a sign that G.o.d Himself was in favor of the ma.s.sacres, for He had caused even innocents to take part. In general, many thought that, since the killings were on no ordinary human scale, they must have been divinely sanctioned. They were not the result of human decisions; they were messages from G.o.d to to humanity, portents of cosmic mayhem just as much as a blighted harvest or a comet in the sky. A medal made in Rome to commemorate the ma.s.sacres showed the Huguenots struck down, not by fellow mortals, but by an armed angel shining with holy wrath. In general, the new Pope, Gregory XIII, seems to have been pleased with events in France. Apart from the medal, he commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint celebratory frescos in the Sala Regia of the Vatican. The French king likewise took part in processions of thanksgiving, and had two medals struck, one portraying himself as Hercules doing battle with the Hydra, the other depicting him on his throne surrounded by naked corpses and holding a palm frond to represent victory. humanity, portents of cosmic mayhem just as much as a blighted harvest or a comet in the sky. A medal made in Rome to commemorate the ma.s.sacres showed the Huguenots struck down, not by fellow mortals, but by an armed angel shining with holy wrath. In general, the new Pope, Gregory XIII, seems to have been pleased with events in France. Apart from the medal, he commissioned Giorgio Vasari to paint celebratory frescos in the Sala Regia of the Vatican. The French king likewise took part in processions of thanksgiving, and had two medals struck, one portraying himself as Hercules doing battle with the Hydra, the other depicting him on his throne surrounded by naked corpses and holding a palm frond to represent victory.

Once the Huguenots had collected themselves and gathered armies to fight back, all-out war broke out again. It would continue through the 1570s, with only occasional pauses. The St. Bartholomew's events formed a dividing line. After this, the wars were more anarchic, and more driven by fanaticism. Besides ordinary battles, much misery was now caused by uncontrolled gangs of soldiers on the rampage, even during supposed peace interludes, when they had no masters and no pay. Peasants sometimes fled and lived wild in the forests rather than wait in town to be attacked and sometimes tortured for the fun of it. This was the state of nature with a vengeance. In 1579, one provincial lawyer, Jean La Rouviere, wrote to the king to beg help for the rustic poor in his area-"miserable, martyrized, and abandoned men" who lived off the land as best they could, having lost all they had. Among the horrors he had seen or heard of were tales of people [image]