The Essays Chapter 18

(1, p. 25v-26v).Michel de MontaigneC118 De la peurMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvuMontaigne - Essais, Éd de Bordeaux, 1.djvu/125v-26v

De la Peur. Chap. XVIII.

OBstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit.

Je ne suis pas bon naturaliste (qu’ils disent) et ne sçay guiere par quels ressors la peur agit en nous ; mais tant y a que c’est une estrange passion : et disent les medecins qu’il n’en est aucune qui emporte plustost nostre jugement hors de sa deue assiette. De vray, j’ay veu beaucoup de gens devenus insensez de peur : et aux plus rassis, il est certain, pendant que son accés dure, qu’elle engendre de terribles esblouissemens. Je laisse à part le vulgaire, à qui elle represente tantost les bisayeulx sortis du tombeau, enveloppez en leur
suaire, tantost des Loups-garous, des Lutins et des chimeres. Mais,
parmy les soldats mesme, où elle devroit trouver moins de place,
combien de fois a elle changé un troupeau de brebis en esquadron de
corselets ? des roseaux et des cannes en gens-d’armes et lanciers ? nos
amis en nos ennemis ? et la croix blanche à la rouge ? Lors que
Monsieur de Bourbon print Rome, un port’enseigne, qui estoit à la
garde du bourg sainct Pierre, fut saisi d’un tel effroy à la premiere
alarme, que, par le trou d’une ruine il se jetta, l’enseigne au poing,
hors la ville, droit aux ennemis, pensant tirer vers le dedans de la
ville, et à peine en fin, voyant la troupe de Monsieur de
Bourbon se renger pour le soustenir, estimant que ce fut une sortie
que ceux de la ville fissent,
il se recogneust, et, tournant teste, rentra par ce mesme
trou, par lequel il estoit sorty plus de trois cens pas anant en
la compaigne. Il n’en advint pas du tout si heureusement a l’enseigne du
Capitaine Juille, lors que S. Pol fut pris sur nous par le
Comte de Bures et Monsieur du Reu : car, estant si fort
esperdu de la frayeur que de se jetter à tout son enseigne hors de la
ville par une canonniere, il fut mis en pieces par les assaillans. Et
au mesme siege fut memorable la peur qui serra, saisit et glaça si
fort le cœur d’un gentil-homme, qu’il en tomba roide mort par terre
à la bresche, sans aucune blessure.

Tantost elle nous donne des aisles aux talons comme aux deux premiers ;
tantost elle nous cloue les pieds et les entrave, comme on lit de
l’Empereur Theophile, lequel, en une bataille qu’il perdit contre les
Agarenes, devint si estonné et si transi, qu’il ne pouvoit prendre
party de s’enfuyr :

jusques à ce que Manuel, l’un des principaux chefs de son armée,
l’ayant tirassé et secoué, comme pour l’esveiller d’un profond
somme,
luy dit : Si vous ne me suivez, je vous tueray ; car il vaut mieux
que
vous perdiez la vie, que si, estant prisonnier, vous veniez à perdre
l’Empire.

Chapter XVIII. That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death.

"Scilicet ultima semper

Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus

Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."

The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who

being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was

going to execution cried out, "O Solon, Solon!" which being presently

reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant,

Croesus gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon had

formerly given him true to his cost; which was, "That men, however

fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they

had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives," by reason of the

uncertainty and mutability of human things, which, upon very light and

trivial occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a quite

contrary condition. And so it was that Agesilaus made answer to one who

was saying what a happy young man the King of Persia was, to come so

young to so mighty a kingdom: "'Tis true," said he, "but neither was

Priam unhappy at his years."-- --In a short time, kings of Macedon, successors to that

mighty Alexander, became joiners and scriveners at Rome; a tyrant of

Sicily, a pedant at Corinth; a conqueror of one-half of the world and

general of so many armies, a miserable suppliant to the rascally officers

of a king of Egypt: so much did the prolongation of five or six months of

life cost the great Pompey; and, in our fathers' days, Ludovico Sforza,

the tenth Duke of Milan, whom all Italy had so long truckled under, was

seen to die a wretched prisoner at Loches, but not till he had lived ten

years in captivity,-- --

which was the worst part of his fortune. The fairest of all queens,

-- --widow to the greatest king in Europe, did she

not come to die by the hand of an executioner? Unworthy and barbarous

cruelty! And a thousand more examples there are of the same kind; for it

seems that as storms and tempests have a malice against the proud and

overtowering heights of our lofty buildings, there are also spirits above

that are envious of the greatnesses here below:

"Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam

Obterit, et pulchros fasces, saevasque secures

Proculcare, ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur."

And it should seem, also, that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise

the last hour of our lives, to show the power she has, in a moment, to

overthrow what she was so many years in building, making us cry out with

Laberius:

"Nimirum hac die

Una plus vixi mihi, quam vivendum fuit."

And, in this sense, this good advice of Solon may reasonably be taken;

but he, being a philosopher (with which sort of men the favours and

disgraces of Fortune stand for nothing, either to the making a man happy

or unhappy, and with whom grandeurs and powers are accidents of a quality

almost indifferent) I am apt to think that he had some further aim, and

that his meaning was, that the very felicity of life itself, which

depends upon the tranquillity and contentment of a well-descended spirit,

and the resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul, ought never to

be attributed to any man till he has first been seen to play the last,

and, doubtless, the hardest act of his part. There may be disguise and

dissimulation in all the rest: where these fine philosophical discourses

are only put on, and where accident, not touching us to the quick, gives

us leisure to maintain the same gravity of aspect; but, in this last

scene of death, there is no more counterfeiting: we must speak out plain,

and discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot,

"Nam vera; voces turn demum pectore ab imo

Ejiciuntur; et eripitur persona, manet res."

Wherefore, at this last, all the other actions of our life ought to be

tried and sifted: 'tis the master-day, 'tis the day that is judge of all

the rest, "'tis the day," says one of the ancients,-- --

"that must be judge of all my foregoing years." To death do I refer the

assay of the fruit of all my studies: we shall then see whether my

discourses came only from my mouth or from my heart. I have seen many by

their death give a good or an ill repute to their whole life. Scipio,

the father-in-law of Pompey, in dying, well removed the ill opinion that

till then every one had conceived of him. Epaminondas being asked which

of the three he had in greatest esteem, Chabrias, Iphicrates, or himself.

"You must first see us die," said he, "before that question can be

resolved."-- --And, in truth, he would infinitely

wrong that man who would weigh him without the honour and grandeur of his

end.

God has ordered all things as it has best pleased Him; but I have, in my

time, seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I knew in all

manner of abominable living, and the most infamous to boot, who all died

a very regular death, and in all circumstances composed, even to

perfection. There are brave and fortunate deaths: I have seen death cut

the thread of the progress of a prodigious advancement, and in the height

and flower of its increase, of a certain person,-- --with so glorious an end that, in my opinion, his ambitious

and generous designs had nothing in them so high and great as their

interruption. He arrived, without completing his course, at the place to

which his ambition aimed, with greater glory than he could either have

hoped or desired, anticipating by his fall the name and power to which he

aspired in perfecting his career. In the judgment I make of another

man's life, I always observe how he carried himself at his death; and the

principal concern I have for my own is that I may die well--that is,

patiently and tranquilly.