occasion of the insurrection in Guienne against the Babel that Stephen
de la Boetie, the young and intimate friend of Montaigne, wrote his
celebrated _Discours de la Servitude voluntaire, ou le Contre-un,_ an
eloquent declamation against monarchy. But the testimony of Montaigne
himself upsets the theory of this coincidence; written in his own hand
upon a manuscript, partly autograph, of the treatise by De la Boetie, is
a statement that it was the work "of a lad of sixteen." La Boetie was
born at Sarlat on the 1st of November, 1530, and was, therefore, sixteen
in 1546, two years before the insurrection at Bordeaux. The _Contre-un,_
besides, is a work of pure theory and general philosophy, containing no
allusion at all to the events of the day, to the sedition in Guienne no
more than to any other. This little work owed to Montaigne's
affectionate regard for its author a great portion of its celebrity.
Published for the first time, in 1578, in the _Memoires de l'Etat de
France,_ after having up to that time run its course without any author's
name, any title, or any date, it was soon afterwards so completely
forgotten that when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Cardinal
de Richelieu for the first time heard it mentioned, and "sent one of his
gentlemen over the whole street of Saint-Jacques to inquire for _la
Servitude volontaire,_ all the publishers said, 'We don't know what it
is.' The son of one of them recollected something about it, and said to
the cardinal's gentleman, 'Sir, there is a book-fancier who has what you
seek, but with no covers to it, and he wants five pistoles for it.'
'Very well,' said the gentleman;" and the Cardinal do Richelieu paid
fifty francs for the pleasure of reading the little political pamphlet by
"a lad of sixteen," which probably made very little impression upon him,
but which, thanks to the elegance and vivacity of its style, and the
affectionate admiration of the greatest independent thinker of the
sixteenth century, has found a place in the history of French literature.
[_Memoires de Tallemant des Reaux,_ t. i. p. 395.]

[Illustration: Anne de Montmorency----235]

History must do justice even to the men whose brutal violence she
stigmatizes and reproves. In the case of Anne do Montmorency it often
took the form of threats intended to save him from the necessity of acts.
When he came upon a scene of any great confusion and disorder, "Go hang
me such an one," he would say; "