Chapter 20

Before leaving Villefranche, a low, square tower enticed me to the parish church. The building was originally Romanesque, but the pointed style must have been grafted upon the other so long ago as the English period. Outside the walls, some steps led me into a little chapel half underground. It was a barrel-vaulted crypt, sternly simple, and lighted only by one very narrow Romanesque window in the apse, just above a rough stone altar of ancient pattern, with a statue of the dead Christ on the ground beneath the slab. In the semi-darkness, the flame of a solitary candle shone without smoke or motion, as if it had been there for centuries, and like all the rest had grown very old.

I had climbed to the ruined Castle of Gurçons, where sloes and blackberries were waiting for the birds in the feudal court strewn with stones. I had left the village of Montpeyroux, with the sound of flails weakening on the wind, and late in the afternoon was drawing near to the Castle of Montaigne, when a small wayside auberge tempted me from the hot road. The woman who waited upon me had a fat body and a hard, firmly inquisitive face--a combination to be distrusted. Having settled down again to her knitting, she inquired of me where I was going, and when I told her that I was on my way to the Château de Montaigne, she asked me if I had any work to do there. I evaded this question, not knowing, or not wishing to know, exactly what she meant. She reflected a few minutes, then, looking at me over her knitting-needles, she said:

'Are you a tiler or a plasterer?'

Now, this was a question that I was quite unprepared for. I had often been set down as a pedlar. I had been suspected of being a travelling musician, and also a colporteur for the Salvation Army; in fact, of being almost everything but a tiler or plasterer. But this shrewd woman had evidently come to the conclusion that, if I did not work upon the housetops, I must perforce be an artist of the trowel. I assured her that I was as incapable of fixing a tile as of making a ceiling; whereupon she said:

'I beg your pardon. I thought you were a workman.'

As I left, I saw by the vivacity with which she scratched the back of her head with a knitting-needle that she was writhing mentally with the torture of unsatisfied curiosity; and I took a malignant pleasure in her suffering. The white flannel that I was wearing was the most agreeable reason I could think of for being associated with plaster, but my resemblance to a tiler continued to perplex me as I trudged along the road.

I now left the broad highway, and took a narrower road that went for some distance through woods up the side of a long hill. The shadows were gathering under the trees, and I was beginning to fear that I should reach the castle too late to carry out my pilgrimage that night, when I saw above me, upon a knoll resting upon rocky buttresses, a modern mansion against a background of trees. This was the very pleasant country residence built by M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire, upon the site of the castle of Montaigne, which the author of the 'Essays,' with a better sense of certain distinctions than that which is observed nowadays, preferred to speak of as his _manoir_. This manor-house still preserved its fifteenth and sixteenth century character, when a fire breaking out destroyed everything but the walls, and gave M. Magne a plausible excuse for the demolition. A part that was spared by the fire, and was therefore suffered to remain intact, was the almost isolated tower, to which Montaigne withdrew for the sake of quiet and meditation, and which is so well known to all readers of his 'Essays.' Had this also disappeared, I should have had no motive for wandering down the long avenue at nearly the end of the day.

I met with a courteous reception at the mansion, and obtained immediate permission to visit the retreat of the sixteenth-century moralist who looked with such clear eyes upon human life.

The tower and its gateway belong to the period when feudalism had lost its vitality, and life was troubled by the vague perception of new motives and principles. Montaigne tells us that his family had occupied the manor a hundred years when he entered into possession, and the style of the fragment that is left bears out this statement: it appears to belong to the middle part of the fifteenth century. Already manorial houses, crenated and often moated, but, like this one at Montaigne, defensive rather for show than the reality, were scattered over France. Speaking generally, they belonged to the small nobility who fell under the category of the _arrière-ban_ in time of war. In this tower Montaigne had his chapel, his bedroom--to which he retired when the yearning for solitude was strong--and his library. The chapel is on the ground-floor, and is very much what it was in Montaigne's time. It is small, but there was room enough to accommodate his household, which was never a large one. Its little cupola connects it with the local style of architecture, to which the high-swelling name of Byzantino-Périgourdin has been given. A small stone altar occupies the apsidal end, and here, as in two or three other places, the arms of Montaigne will be noted with interest by those who have read in the essays: '_Je porte d'azur semé de trèfles d'or, à une patte de lyon de mesme armée de gueules, mise en face_.'

A man is often a sceptic on the surface and a believer underneath. Pascal has called Montaigne '_un pur pyrrhonien_'; but Pascal himself has been accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence like Montaigne with a horror of creeds, he was no philosopher of the God-denying sort. Moreover, notwithstanding his doubting moods and his fondness of the words '_Que sais-je?_' he upheld the practice of religion in his own home, and died a Christian.

He shared, however, the eccentricity of Louis XI. in keeping himself out of sight when he attended the religious services in his chapel. In the vaulting near the entrance is a small opening communicating with a narrow passage, by means of which Montaigne could leave his bedroom and hear mass without showing himself; but in order to do so he had to grope along his rabbit's burrow almost on hands and knees. To reach his bedroom from the ground, he climbed up the spiral staircase as the visitor does today. The steps are much worn in places, and the boots of the essayist must have had something to do with this, for he probably used the tower more than any other man. The room, nearly circular in shape, with brick floor and small windows, looks to modern eyes more like a prison than a bed-chamber befitting a nobleman. But independently of the great difference in the ideas of home comfort which prevailed in the upper ranks of sixteenth-century society, compared to those of the same class to-day, Montaigne, like all men with large minds, loved simplicity. His father, who rode the hobby-horse of frugal and severe training to an extent that might have proved disastrous to his son Michel, had not the boy been singularly well endowed by nature to correspond to his parent's wishes, had nurtured him in the scorn of luxury by methods which would be considered very crotchety nowadays. But this could not have been 'my chamber' in which King Henry of Navarre slept, in 1584, when he paid a visit to Montaigne at his fortified house. There was a better one in that part of the building which has disappeared. Montaigne tells, with his quaint humour, that he was in the habit of retiring to his bedroom in the tower so that he might rule there undisturbed, and have a corner apart from what he curiously terms the 'conjugal, filial, and civil community.' And he expresses pity for the man who is not able to 'hide himself' in the same way when the humour leads him to do so.

It was in the room above, however, where he enjoyed to the full the pleasures of contemplation and quietude. Here, he tells us, he had installed his library, in what had previously been regarded as the most useless part of his mansion. The position had certain advantages. 'I can see beneath me my garden and my poultry-yard, and can look into the principal parts of my house.' It appears from this that he was so much 'in the clouds,' that he did not occasionally find satisfaction from peeping through windows to see what others were doing. It is in this way that the old writers reveal themselves, and they keep themselves in sympathy with mankind by not affecting to be above the little weaknesses common to humanity. Here Montaigne spent the greater part of his time, except in winter, when he often found the library too draughty to be comfortable. It was in this room that he wrote his essays, and chiefly thought them out while pacing up and down the floor, which even then was so uneven that the only flat bit was where he had placed his table and chair. In common with some other celebrated writers, he found that his thoughts went to sleep when he sat down. 'My. mind does not work unless the legs make it move. Those who study without a book are all in the same state.'

Montaigne was no despiser of books; on the contrary, he was a great reader, and one of the most scholarly men of his age; but he had his fits of reading like other people, and the intervals between them were sometimes long. Without a doubt, these intervals were the most productive periods. The educational system to which he was subjected as a child was enough to disgust him with books, and to separate him for ever from them as soon as he had obtained his freedom. He was crammed with Latin, as a goose that has to be fattened is crammed with maize in his own Périgord. He was not allowed to speak even to his mother in French or in Périgourdin. Such was the will of his father, who must have been a rather difficult man to live with, and one whom a woman of spirit in this century would kill or cure with curtain lectures if his interference with her in the nursery should outrage the instincts of maternity. The very small boy was handed over to tutors, whose instructions were to make Latin his first language, and even his mother and servants were compelled to pick up enough Latin words to carry on some sort of conversation with him.

In the printers' preface to one of the earliest editions of the 'Essays,' it is said: '_Somme, ils se_ _latinisèrent tant qu'il en regorgea jusque à leurs villages tout autour, où ont pris pied par usage plusieurs appellations latines d'artisans et d'outils.'_ It is just possible that some of these Latin terms may have lingered in the district to the present day; but it would need a great deal of patience to find them, and to distinguish them from the patois of the people. Montaigne was more than six years old before he was allowed to say a word in French or in the dialect of Périgord--that of Arnaud and Bertrand de Born. He finished his austere education at the then celebrated College of Guyenne, at Bordeaux, where, according to local authorities, he had among his teachers the Scotch poet, George Buchanan.

'When young,' writes Montaigne, 'I studied for show; afterwards to grow wiser; now I study for diversion.' He liked to have his books around him even when he did not read them. Numerous reading-desks were distributed over the brick floor of this circular room, and upon them he placed his favourite volumes. He therefore read standing, according to the very general custom of his time, which was doubtless better than our own, of making our backs crooked by sitting and bending over our books. According to his own admission, he had a bad memory, therefore he must have been in frequent need of referring to his tomes for the quotations from ancient authors which he was so fond of bringing into his text, and which make a writer at this end of the nineteenth century smile at the thought of how all the quills would rise upon that fretful and pampered porcupine, the reading public of to-day, if Latin and Greek were ladled out to it after Montaigne's fashion.

The room is bare, with the exception of the wreck of an armchair of uncertain history; but upon the forty-seven beams crossing the ceiling are fifty-four inscriptions in Latin and Greek, written, or rather painted, with a brush by Montaigne. Their interest has suffered a little from the restoration which some of them have undergone; but there they are, the crystals of thought picked up by the hermit of the tower in his wanderings along the highways and byways of ancient literature, and which he fastened, as it were, to the beams over his head, just where the peasants to-day hang their dry sausages, their bacon, and strings of garlic. Many persons copy sentences out of their favourite books, with the intention of tasting their savour again and again; but if they do not lose them, they are generally too busy or too indolent afterwards to look for them. Montaigne, however, had his favourite texts always before his eyes.

The curious visitor intent upon a discovery will be sure to find in these the philosophical scaffolding of the 'Essays;' but I, who examine such things somewhat superficially, would rather believe that Montaigne inscribed them upon the rough wood because they expressed in a few words much that he had already thought or felt. By the extracts that a man makes for his private satisfaction from the authors who please him, the bent of his intellect and cast of character can be very accurately judged. If other testimony were wanting, these sentences would prove the gravely philosophical temper of Montaigne's mind, notwithstanding the flippant confessions of frailty which he mingles sometimes so incongruously with the reflections of a sage. Most of the extracts are from Latin and Greek authors, but not a few are from the Books of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus and the Epistles of St. Paul. Here one sees written by the hand of the sixteenth century thinker the noble words of Terence:

'Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto.'

Then one catches sight of this line by the sagacious Horace:

'Quid aeternis minorem consiliis animum fatigas?'

Looking at another piece of timber, one slowly spells out the words:

'O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!'

And so one follows the track of Montaigne's mind from rafter to rafter.

Had I been left alone here while the evening shadows gathered in the tower, I might soon have seen the figure of a man in trunk-hose, doublet, and ruff, with pointed beard and pensive eyes, moving noiselessly between rows of spectral desks covered by spectral books; but, as it was, even in the most shadowy corner I could not detect the faintest outline of a ghost. Nobody knows what has become of all the volumes which were here, and which were said to have numbered a thousand. They were given by Montaigne's only surviving child, his daughter Léonore, to the Abbé de Roquefort, but what became of them afterwards is a mystery. There is a small room adjoining the library, the one that Montaigne mentions as having a fireplace. The hearth where he sat and warmed himself has scarcely changed. Here on the walls may be seen traces of paintings. They are supposed to be the work of a travelling artist, to whom Montaigne gave food and shelter in exchange for his labour. It would appear from this that he was careful not to ruin himself by the encouragement of art. Montaigne, however, had a good nature, although he may not have cared to spend money on bad pictures. He has told us of his efforts to reclaim little beggars, and to make them respectable members of society. Before the present château was built, the old kitchen could be seen where he warmed and fed the young mendicants, who, having been refreshed and comforted, returned to their old ways, '_les gueux ayant leurs magnificences et leurs voluptés comme les riches_.'

The village of St. Michel is close to the château, but is of much more ancient origin, as its church plainly shows. The venerable Romanesque door-way was to me more beautiful because of the purple spots of snapdragon, that shone in the clear dimness of the twilight like little coloured lamps about the crevices of the old stones. It is uncertain whether Montaigne was christened here or in the family chapel. It was a strange christening wherever it took place, for we are told that he was 'held over the font' by persons of most humble condition, his father's motive in this matter being, according to the printers of the early edition of the 'Essays' already referred to, 'to attach him to those who might have need of him rather than to those of whom he might have need.' It was Papessu, another village in the neighbourhood, to which he was sent as a nurseling, and where, in obedience to the injunctions of his Spartan father, he was treated like one of the peasant family with whom he was placed. He was reared from his cradle in frugality and philosophy, and, considering what an unpleasant childhood he must have passed, it is truly wonderful that he fulfilled parental expectations, and did not turn out a hard drinker and a brawling cavalier.

There is a tradition in Périgord which some local writers have accepted as fact, that the Montaigne family was of English origin. It is not easy to ascertain the ground on which it rests. The patronymic was Eyquem, and the _chevalier-seigneur_, who settled in Périgord and took the territorial title of Montagne or Montaigne, came from the Bordelais.

That is about all that is really known of the family. If the Eyquem had borne a prominent part against the French kings in the long wars which had not ended a hundred years before the birth of the moralist, this would have been sufficient to account for their being described as English.

Speaking of the peasants of his district, Montaigne tells us that their dress was 'more distant from ours than that of a man who is only clothed with his skin.' From this we have a right to suppose that their appearance was original, if not picturesque. To-day it is neither one nor the other. With the exception of the kerchief tied round the back of the head, after the fashion of the Périgourdine or the Bordelaise, by some of the women, these peasants wear nothing to distinguish them from those who have entirely abandoned a local costume.

I was in no way pleased with the villagers of St. Michel-Montaigne, nor did they seem to be agreeably impressed by me. Those to whom I spoke did not conceal their surprise that I had been allowed to see over the castle. I think they must have set me down for something less respectable than a plasterer, and I began to think quite seriously that I was neglecting my appearance. Then I thought of the knapsack, which was really getting to look, from long usage, as if the time had come for placing it in the way of a deserving _chiffonnier_, but I could not make up my mind to buy another. I was anxious to pass the night in the village, for I hoped that the inhabitants had preserved some traditions of Montaigne; but there was only a small and very dirty-looking auberge that had any pretension to lodge man and beast, and here the hostess rejected my overtures with vivacity. Consequently, I was compelled to trudge on, and as I left the place I shook the dust from off my feet at the inhabitants. There was plenty of it, but I am afraid it did them little harm.

The road, now descending towards the Dordogne, passed through great vineyards, and there was enough light for the clustered bunches of grapes to be seen on every vine. Under the calm sky, still full of the heat of the summer day, and glowing duskily, the wide, sloping land offered up all its myriads of broad, motionless leaves and its wealth of fruit to the god of wine. O gentle peace of the summer night that has still the bloom of the sun upon its dusky cheek--peace untroubled by any sound save the joyous shrilling of the cricket that has climbed upon the darkening leaf--why do I hurry onward upon the dusty road, instead of sitting upon a bank amid the fragrant thyme and agrimony, and letting the mind lay in great store of your sweetness against the cold and dismal nights to come?

I reached the village of La Mothe by the Dordogne, and while I was casting about for an inn that looked comfortable, and also hospitable, I met a pretty little brunette with a rich southern colour in her cheeks, charmingly coifed _à la bordelaise_, and tripping jauntily along with a coffee-pot in her hand. It was pleasant to look at a nice face again after all the ill-favoured visages that had risen up against me during the second half of the day, and so I stopped this pretty girl and asked her to tell me which was the best hotel in the place. She would not answer the question, but she mentioned a hotel which she said was as good as any. Thither I went, and found a comfortable little inn, where I was well received. I had not been there long when the little brunette entered. She was the 'daughter of the house.' I now understood that her hesitation was conscientious.

The hostess was a small, sprightly woman with a smiling face, which, together with her bright-coloured coif gracefully hanging to her black hair, made up such a head as puts one in a good temper for a whole evening. She was so highly civilized that she actually asked me if I would like to wash my hands. I expected that she was going to lead me to one of those little cisterns--'fountains' in French--attached to the wall, that one sees throughout Guyenne, and which have come down almost unchanged in form, as well as the roller-towels that often go with them, from the feudal castles of the twelfth century; but I was wrong. She led me to a bucket. Filling a large ladle with water, she fixed it lengthwise, and the handle being a tube, the water ran slowly out from the end. I quite understood that I had to wash my hands with the trickling water, for I had often done it before. These ladles with hollow handles are also used for sprinkling the floors, which are never washed in Southern France. The sprinkling lays the dust, cools the air, and depresses the fleas for at least a quarter of an hour.

After I had dealt with a well-cooked little dinner, plentifully bedewed with a pleasant but not insidious wine grown upon the sunny slopes above the Dordogne, I made the discovery that the best room in the house was occupied by the dark-eyed damsel, except when a guest came along who managed to ingratiate himself with her mother, and then the daughter had to turn out. The room was not exactly luxurious, for it contained little besides the bed, a table, and a chair, but it was bright and clean; and when I had confided myself to the strong hempen sheets that had still half a century of wear in them, and had passed the first quarter of an hour, which is always critical, without being made aware by scouts and skirmishers of the advance of a hostile force, I was very thankful that I was not received with open arms in the village of St. Michel-Montaigne.

The next morning I met the Dordogne again after a long separation. It was now a great river flowing quietly through a vine-covered plain. The rapids had all been left far away, but it had begun to feel the tide, and this to a river is like the first shock of death. It struggles for awhile with destiny, and a sadder sound than the cry which it made when it came forth from the rock or the little lake is heard in the quiet evening or the more solemn night. Although it is flowing back to its true source, the river shrinks from the vast and mysterious ocean as we shrink ourselves from the immense unknown.