egraded, and afterward put to death,
according, says he, to the ancient laws,--[Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiv.
4; xxv. i.]--and yet elsewhere for the like offence he only condemned
others to remain amongst the prisoners under the baggage ensign. The
severe punishment the people of Rome inflicted upon those who fled from
the battle of Cannae, and those who ran away with Aeneius Fulvius at his
defeat, did not extend to death. And yet, methinks, 'tis to be feared,
lest disgrace should make such delinquents desperate, and not only faint
friends, but enemies.

Of late memory,--[In 1523]--the Seigneur de Frauget, lieutenant to the
Mareschal de Chatillon's company, having by the Mareschal de Chabannes
been put in government of Fuentarabia in the place of Monsieur de Lude,
and having surrendered it to the Spaniard, he was for that condemned to
be degraded from all nobility, and both himself and his posterity
declared ignoble, taxable, and for ever incapable of bearing arms, which
severe sentence was afterwards accordingly executed at Lyons.--[In 1536]
--And, since that, all the gentlemen who were in Guise when the Count of
Nassau entered into it, underwent the same punishment, as several others
have done since for the like offence. Notwithstanding, in case of such a
manifest ignorance or cowardice as exceeds all ordinary example, 'tis but
reason to take it for a sufficient proof of treachery and malice, and for
such to be punished.

CHAPTER XVI

A PROCEEDING OF SOME AMBASSADORS

I observe in my travels this custom, ever to learn something from the
information of those with whom I confer (which is the best school of all
others), and to put my company upon those subjects they are the best able
to speak of:--

"Basti al nocchiero ragionar de' venti,
Al bifolco dei tori; et le sue piaghe
Conti'l guerrier; conti'l pastor gli armenti."

["Let the sailor content himself with talking of the winds; the
cowherd of his oxen; the soldier of his wounds; the shepherd of his
flocks."--An Italian translation of Propertius, ii. i, 43]

For it often falls out that, on the contrary, every one will rather
choose to be prating of another man's province than his own, thinking it
so much new reputation acquired; witness the jeer Archidamus put upon
Pertander, "that he had quitted the glory of being an excellent physician
to gain the repute of a very bad poet.--[Plutarch, Apoth.