The Complete Essays (51 page)

Totus et argento conflatus, totus et auro;

[With everything cast in gold and silver;]

[A] does he not lose all memory of his grandeur and his palaces? And if he is in a temper, does his kingdom stop him from turning red, then livid, and grinding his teeth like a madman?

Now if he is a clever man and well endowed, his royal state will add [C] little [A] to his happiness:

Si
ventri bene, si lateri est pedibusque tuis, nil
Divitiæ poterunt regales addere majus;

[If your stomach, lungs and feet are all right, then a king’s treasure can offer you no more;]
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he knows it to be deception and vanity. Yes, and he may perhaps agree with the opinion of King Seleucus, that if a man knew the weight of a sceptre he would not bother to pick it up if he found it lying on the ground – he said that because of the great and painful responsibilities weighing on a
good
king.
¹⁸
Indeed it is no little thing to have to rule others, since there are so many difficulties in ruling ourselves. As for being in command – which appears so pleasant – I am strongly of the opinion (given the weakness of man’s judgement and the difficulty of making choices in new and doubtful matters) that it is far more easy and agreeable to be led than to lead, and that there is great peace of mind to be found in merely having to follow the road you are told to and in being responsible for no one but yourself:

[B]
Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
Quam regere imperio res velle
.

[So that it is far better quietly to obey than to seek to rule in state.]

Added to which Cyrus said that no man has any right to give orders if his worth is not greater than those who receive them.
¹⁹
[A] But King Hieron, in Xenophon, goes farther and maintains that in the very enjoyment of pleasures kings are in a worse condition than private citizens, since ease and accessibility robs them of that bittersweet pain we find in them:

[B]
Pinguis amor nimiumque potens, in tædia nobis
Vertitur, et stomacho dulcis ut esca nocet
.

[Too strong and rich a love-affair soon turns loathsome, just as sweet food sickens the stomach.]

[A] Do we believe that choirboys greatly enjoy the music or rather that, being glutted with it, they find it boring? Feasting and dancing, masquerades and tournaments give delight to those who do not often see them and who were yearning to see them; but for a man who attends them regularly they become tasteless and disagreeable. Nor do women excite a man who has enjoyed them until his
mind
is sated; if a man does not give himself time to get thirsty he will never enjoy drinking.
²⁰
We enjoy farces: they are drudgery to the travelling players. As proof of this, it is a treat and feast for princes to put on disguises occasionally and to drop into the way of living of the ordinary common people.

Plerumque gratæ principibus vices,
Mundæque parvo sub lare pauperum
Cænæ, sine aulæis et ostro,
    Solicitant explicuere frontem
.

[Often a change is pleasant to princes; a clean and frugal meal beneath a poor man’s modest roof, without tapestries and purple, has smoothed the worried brow.]
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[C] Nothing cloys and impedes like abundance. What appetite would not be put off by the sight of three hundred accessible women such as the Grand Seigneur has in his harem? And what appetite for what kind of hunting did one of his ancestors keep up, who never took to the field with fewer than seven thousand falconers?

[A] Moreover I believe that the splendour of greatness brings quite a few impediments to the enjoyment of even the sweetest pleasures; they are too brightly illuminated, too much on show.

[B] And I do not know why, but we expect kings to cover up their faults more and to hide them better. What is a misdemeanor in us is, in them, considered an act of tyranny by the people, as disdain and contempt for the law; any tendency to vice apart, they look as if they are taking additional pleasure in scornfully trampling public decency underfoot.
[C] Indeed Plato in his dialogue
Gorgias
defines a tyrant as a man who, in his city, is free to do anything he wants.
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[B] So, often, the flaunting of their vice in public hurts more than the vice itself. Every man loathes being spied on and having his actions recorded: but kings
are
spied on, down to their facial expressions and their thoughts, the entire people reckoning that they have the right and privilege of making judgements upon them. The higher and brighter the spot, the bigger the stain: a mole or wart on your forehead shows up more than a scar does elsewhere.

[A] That is why poets feign that Jupiter conducted his love-affairs disguised as something else: among all the amorous adventures which they credit him with, there is not one, I think, where he appears in might and majesty.

But let us get back to Hieron. He tells of all the inconveniences he experiences in his royal state arising from the impossibility of going freely about on his travels (which makes him a prisoner within the frontiers of his own country) and from always being hemmed in by a troublesome crowd. Indeed when seeing our own monarchs sitting alone at their tables, besieged by so many unknown talkers and gazers, I have often felt more pity for them than envy. [B] King Alfonso said that donkeys were better off than kings: their drivers let them at least feed in peace, whereas kings cannot get even their servants to let them do so. [A] And the idea has never occurred to me that it was a special privilege for a man of intelligence to have a score of witnesses standing round his lavatory-seat, nor that it was more pleasant and agreeable to be waited on by a man worth ten thousand a year or by a soldier who had taken Casale or defended Siena than by a good and experienced manservant.

[B] Most royal prerogatives are virtually imaginary: each degree of wealth has some image of royalty in it. The term used by Caesar for all the lords who held sway in the France of his time was ‘little kings’;
²³
and in truth, apart from the title
Sire
, you can all but live like a king. Just consider for example those provinces lying far from the Court – Brittany, say. Take a lord who lives at home on his estates there and who has been brought up among his men-servants: note his retinue, his subjects, his officers-of-state, his pastimes, the way he is served, his ceremonial; then see how high his thoughts can soar. Nothing could be more royal. His
own feudal master is mentioned, like the King of Persia, about once in a twelve-month; he acknowledges him merely because of some ancient cousinship recorded in his secretary’s archives. In very truth our laws are in no wise repressive: the weight of the sovereign power is felt by your average French nobleman about twice in a lifetime. Real effective subordination only concerns those who welcome it and who love to gain honour and wealth by such servitude: the man who is content to squat by his hearth and who knows how to govern his household without squabbles or law-suits is as free as the Duke of Venice. [C]
‘Paucos servitus, plures servitutem tenent.’
[Slavery holds on to few: many hold on to it.]
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[A] But Hieron regrets above all that he finds himself deprived of mutual friendship and companionship, in which consists the most perfect and the sweetest fruit of human life: ‘For what proof of love or affection can I draw from a man who, whether he wants to or not, owes me everything in his power? Can I attach importance to his humble address and his courteous respect, seeing that he cannot refuse them to me? The honour we receive from those who fear us is not honour at all: their respect is due to my royal state not to myself:’

          [B]
maximum hoc regni bonum est,
Quod facta domini cogitur populus sui
Quam ferre tam laudare
.

[The greatest advantage of being a king is that his people are not only forced to put up with whatever their Master does: they must praise it.]
²⁵

[A] ‘Can I not see the same respect shown to the good king and to the bad, to the king they hate and to the one they love? The same outward show and the same ceremonial were offered to my predecessor and will be offered to my successor. If my subjects do nothing to displease me that is no proof of their good-will towards me: why should I take it to be so, since they could not do anything else even if they should wish to? No one follows me for any love that is between us, since loving-friendship cannot be plaited together when there is so little contact and correlation. My high rank has put me outside all human relationships: there is too great a disparity and disproportion. It is by convention and custom that they follow me – [C] not so much me as my fortune, so as to amass fortunes
of their own.
²⁶
[A] All they say and do for me is merely cosmetic. Since their freedom is everywhere bridled by the mighty power I wield over them, I can see nothing around me but hypocrisy and disguise.’

Courtiers were praising the Emperor Julian one day for administering such good justice: ‘I would be prepared to be proud of such praises,’ he said, ‘if they came from persons who could dare to condemn and censure any actions of mine when they were contrary to justice.’
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[B] All the real prerogatives of monarchs are held in common by all men of moderate wealth. (It is for gods to mount wingèd horses and to sup on ambrosia!) They have no other sleep, no other appetites but ours; their steel is not better tempered than that of our swords; their crown does not protect them from sun or from rain. Diocletian, who wore a crown of such honour and good omen, gave it up to withdraw to the pleasures of private life; some time later when a crisis of state solicited him to return and take up his burden, he replied to those who were begging him to do so: ‘If only you could see the ordered beauty of the trees I have planted in my garden and the fine melons I have sown there you would not try and persuade me.’

The conviction of Anacharsis was that the happiest establishment for a State would be one in which all else being equal, degrees of honour went according to virtue and those of reprobation to vice.
²⁸

[A] When King Pyrrhus was planning to cross over into Italy his wise counsellor Cyneas, wishing to make him realize the inanity of his ambition, asked him, ‘Well now, Sire, what end do you propose in planning this great project?’ – ‘To make myself master of Italy,’ came his swift reply. ‘And when that is done?’ – ‘I will cross into Gaul and Spain.’ – ‘And then?’ – ‘I will go and subjugate Africa.’ – ‘And in the end?’ – ‘When I have brought the whole world under my subjection, I shall seek my repose, living happily at my ease.’ Cyneas then returned to the attack: ‘Then by God tell me, Sire, if that is what you want, what is keeping you from doing it at once? Why do you not place yourself now where you say you aspire to be, and so spare yourself all the toil and risk that you are putting between you and it?’

Nimirum quia non bene norat quæ esset habendi
Finis, et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas
.

[It is because he does not seem to know the bounds one should set to desire nor how far true pleasure can extend.]
²⁹

I am going to close this chapter with an ancient phrase which I find particularly beautiful and apt:
‘Mores cuique sui fingunt fortunam.’
[Each man’s morals shape his destiny.]
³⁰

43. On sumptuary laws

[A whole series of sumptuary laws sought to restrain rash expenditure on clothing and jewels and to limit extravagances in eating and dressing to certain classes of society. These laws were reiterated under Francis I, Henry II and Charles IX. Montaigne was inspired to write on the subject by Amyot’s translation of Diodorus Siculus. His conservatism is deep-rooted and based on moral commitment. Dress and so on are ‘matters indifferent’, but constant giddy change undermines the very foundations of a culture.]

[A] The way our laws make an assay at limiting insane and inane expenditure on table and clothing seems to run contrary to their end. The right way would be to engender in men a contempt for gold and silk as things vain and useless: we increase their honour and esteem, which is a most inappropriate way of putting people off them. For to declare that only princes may [C] eat turbot and [A] wear velvet and gold braid, forbidding them to the people, what is that but enhancing such things and making everyone want to have them? Let kings stoutly renounce such symbols of greatness: they have others enough; [B] such excess is more pardonable in anyone else but a king. [A] We can learn from the example of many a nation plenty of better ways of indicating our different ranks and distinctions – something which I do indeed think to be requisite in a state – without encouraging such manifest corruption and evil. It is wonderful how quickly and easily custom plants her authoritative foothold in matters so indifferent. In mourning for Henry II we have been wearing plain-cloth at Court for barely a year now, yet it is already certain that silk has become so unaristocratic that if you do see anyone wearing it you [C] immediately take him for one of the townsfolk.
¹
[A] It has become the lot of doctors and barber-surgeons. Even if everyone dressed more or less identically there would still be enough other ways of showing differences of rank.

[B] (How quickly do muddy doublets of chamois-leather or coarse-cloth come to be honoured by our soldiers in the field, and rich elegant clothes bring reproach and contempt.)

[A] Let our kings start giving up spending money on such things and it would be all over in a month, without edict or ordinance: we will all follow suit. The Law ought to state, on the contrary, that purple and goldsmithery are forbidden to all ranks of society except whores and travelling-players.

It was with astuteness like that that Zeleucus reformed the debauched customs of the Locrians. He ordained as follows: ‘That no free-born woman be attended by more than one chambermaid, except when she be drunk; That no woman leave the city by night or wear any golden jewellery about her person nor any richly embroidered dress, unless she be a public prostitute; That except for such as live on immoral earnings, no man shall wear gold rings on his fingers nor any elegant robes such as those tailored from cloth woven in Miletus.’ Thus, with those shaming exceptions, he cleverly diverted the inhabitants of his city away from pernicious superfluities and luxuries. [B] That was a most useful way to bring men to obedience by honour and ambition.
²

French kings are all-powerful over the reformation of such externals: their fancy is law. [C]
‘Quidquid principes faciunt, praecipere videntur.’
[Any actions of princes seem like commands.]
³
The rest of the country
⁴
adopts as canon the canons of the Court. [B] Let the Court stop liking those vulgar codpieces which make a parade of our [C] hidden [A] parts, those heavily padded doublets which make our shape look different and our armour so hard to put on; those long effeminate tresses; the custom of kissing any gift offered to our companions, and our hands, too, when we greet them (an honour formerly due only to princes); allowing a nobleman to appear in respectable company with no sword at his side, untidy and unbuttoned, as though he had just come straight from the privy; the custom (something contrary to the practice of our forefathers and the express privilege of the nobility of this Kingdom) of remaining hat-in-hand even when at some distance from our monarchs, wherever they happen to be (as well as in the presence of dozens of others, so many tercelets and quartlets of kings do we have);
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and so on for similar recent
and depraved innovations: then they would soon all vanish in disapproval. Such defects may be all on the surface, but they augur badly: when we see cracks in the plaster and the cladding of our walls it warns us that there are fissures in the actual masonry.

[C] In his
Laws
Plato concludes that no plague in this world can do more damage to his city than allowing liberty to the young to change from fashion to fashion in their dress, comportment, dances, sports and songs, constantly changing the basis of their ideas this way and that, running after novelties and honouring those who invent them; by such things are morals corrupted and all ancient principles brought into disdain and contempt. In all things – except quite simply for those which are evil – change is to be feared, including changes of seasons, winds, diets and humours; and no laws are truly respected except those to which God has vouchsafed so long a continuance that no one knows how they were born or that they had ever been different.
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