The Essays of Montaigne — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,716 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Complete.

The Essays of Montaigne — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,716 pages of information about The Essays of Montaigne — Complete.

Does she not seem to be an artist here?  Constantine, son of Helena, founded the empire of Constantinople, and so many ages after, Constantine, the son of Helen, put an end to it.  Sometimes she is pleased to emulate our miracles we are told, that King Clovis besieging Angouleme, the walls fell down of themselves by divine favour and Bouchet has it from some author, that King Robert having sat down before a city, and being stolen away from the siege to go keep the feast of St. Aignan at Orleans, as he was in devotion at a certain part of the Mass, the walls of the beleaguered city, without any manner of violence, fell down with a sudden ruin.  But she did quite contrary in our Milan wars; for, le Capitaine Rense laying siege for us to the city Arona, and having carried a mine under a great part of the wall, the mine being sprung, the wall was lifted from its base, but dropped down again nevertheless, whole and entire, and so exactly upon its foundation, that the besieged suffered no inconvenience by that attempt.

Sometimes she plays the physician.  Jason of Pheres being given over by the physicians, by reason of an imposthume in his breast, having a mind to rid himself of his pain, by death at least, threw himself in a battle desperately into the thickest of the enemy, where he was so fortunately wounded quite through the body, that the imposthume broke, and he was perfectly cured.  Did she not also excel the painter Protogenes in his art? who having finished the picture of a dog quite tired and out of breath, in all the other parts excellently well to his own liking, but not being able to express, as he would, the slaver and foam that should come out of its mouth, vexed and angry at his work, he took his sponge, which by cleaning his pencils had imbibed several sorts of colours, and threw it in a rage against the picture, with an intent utterly to deface it; when fortune guiding the sponge to hit just upon the mouth of the dog, it there performed what all his art was not able to do.  Does she not sometimes direct our counsels and correct them?  Isabel, Queen of England, having to sail from Zealand into her own kingdom,—­[in 1326]—­ with an army, in favour of her son against her husband, had been lost, had she come into the port she intended, being there laid wait for by the enemy; but fortune, against her will, threw her into another haven, where she landed in safety.  And that man of old who, throwing a stone at a dog, hit and killed his mother-in-law, had he not reason to pronounce this verse: 

          ["Fortune has more judgement than we.”—­Menander]

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The Essays of Montaigne — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.