it a couple of chickens and broil them, and to pepper
but one. Do you like pepper, M. de l'Escale?

_Scaliger._ Not much.

_Montaigne._ Hold hard! let the pepper alone: I hate it. Tell him to
broil plenty of ham; only two slices at a time, upon his salvation.

_Scaliger._ This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library: here
are your everyday books.

_Montaigne._ Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, methinks; is
not that your opinion?

_Scaliger._ You have great resources within yourself, and therefore
can do with fewer.

_Montaigne._ Why, how many now do you think here may be?

_Scaliger._ I did not believe at first that there could be above
fourscore.

_Montaigne._ Well! are fourscore few?--are we talking of peas and
beans?

_Scaliger._ I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh as
many.

_Montaigne._ Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one reads
books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity. How do you
like my wine?--it comes from the little knoll yonder: you cannot see
the vines, those chestnut-trees are between.

_Scaliger._ The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a
smartness like a sharp child's prattle.

_Montaigne._ It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which
many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a
day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen
of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best
under the sun. I do not wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should
be jealous of their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you
prefer your own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in
my cellar, with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not
know, M. de l'Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not
quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?

_Scaliger._ I know three things: wine, poetry, and the world.

_Montaigne._ You know one too many, then. I hardly know whether I know
anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard.
Ronsard is so plaguily stiff and stately, where there is no occasion
for it; I verily do think the man must have slept with his wife in a
cuirass.

_Scaliger._ It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His versions of
the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New Testament of
Geneva.

_Montaigne._ It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of
vinegar, whi