rgil and Cicero. The study of
Greek took precedence. At six years of age young Montaigne went to the
College of Guienne at Bordeaux, where he had as preceptors the most
eminent scholars of the sixteenth century, Nicolas Grouchy, Guerente,
Muret, and Buchanan. At thirteen he had passed through all the classes,
and as he was destined for the law he left school to study that science.
He was then about fourteen, but these early years of his life are
involved in obscurity. The next information that we have is that in 1554
he received the appointment of councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux;
in 1559 he was at Bar-le-Duc with the court of Francis II, and in the
year following he was present at Rouen to witness the declaration of the
majority of Charles IX. We do not know in what manner he was engaged on
these occasions.

Between 1556 and 1563 an important incident occurred in the life of
Montaigne, in the commencement of his romantic friendship with Etienne de
la Boetie, whom he had met, as he tells us, by pure chance at some
festive celebration in the town. From their very first interview the two
found themselves drawn irresistibly close to one another, and during six
years this alliance was foremost in the heart of Montaigne, as it was
afterwards in his memory, when death had severed it.

Although he blames severely in his own book [Essays, i. 27.] those who,
contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, marry before five-and-thirty,
Montaigne did not wait for the period fixed by the philosopher of
Stagyra, but in 1566, in his thirty-third year, he espoused Francoise de
Chassaigne, daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux. The
history of his early married life vies in obscurity with that of his
youth. His biographers are not agreed among themselves; and in the
same degree that he lays open to our view all that concerns his secret
thoughts, the innermost mechanism of his mind, he observes too much
reticence in respect to his public functions and conduct, and his social
relations. The title of Gentleman in Ordinary to the King, which he
assumes, in a preface, and which Henry II. gives him in a letter, which
we print a little farther on; what he says as to the commotions of
courts, where he passed a portion of his life; the Instructions which he
wrote under the dictation of Catherine de Medici for King Charles IX.,
and his noble correspondence with Henry IV., leave no doubt, however, as
to the part which he