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BOOK III, CHAPTER V 57

more, and manifestly an animal-like want of intelligence ! is incomparably more infrequent there; in exceptional souls, and of the highest rank, we are in no wise inferior to them. Were I to extend this comparison, it would seem to me that I might say in respect to valour that it is, on the other hand, as compared with them, universal among us, and inborn;? but sometimes we find them possessed with it so complete and so vigorous that it surpasses all the sturdiest examples that we have of it. Marriages in that country go amiss in a certain respect: custom there habitually makes the author- ity over women so harsh and slavish that the most distant acquaintance with a stranger is as capital as the closest. As a result of this authority, any drawing together is rendered necessarily a reality; and since it all comes to the same thing for them, they have a very easy choice. (c) And when they have broken down the barriers, be assured that they are on fire: /uxuria ipsis oinculis, sicut fera bestia irritata,

deinde emissa.* (8) They must be given the rein a little;

Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem, Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo.§

The desire for companionship is weakened by giving it some liberty. We experience almost the same fortune. They are too extreme in restraint, we in license.

It is an excellent custom of our nation that our children are entertained in households of the great, there to be nur- tured and bred up as pages, as in a school of nobility; and it is a discourtesy, they say, and an affront to refuse this to a gentleman.” I have observed (for there are as many dif-

1 Brutalité.

• Cf. Book II, chap. 17, “Of Presumption”: “Valour . . . has be-

come a common quality.”

• Toutes les approches se rendent necessairement substantieles.

• Wantonness, like a wild beast, is maddened by the very bonds that

imprison it, and then bursts forth. — Livy, XXXIV, 4. Montaigne has changed the original text somewhat, after his fashion.

• | saw of late a horse, rebellious against his bit, tug with his mouth

and plunge like a thunderbolt. — Ovid, Amores, III, 4.13.

• The following sentence of 1588 was omitted in the posthumous

editions: dyant tant de pieces d mettre en communication, on les achemine ay —~ fousjours la derniere, puisgue c'est tout d'un pris.

7 That is, to refuse to let him have a child to bring up.

Gor gle