Michel de Montaigne

“ On the Monday we repaired to the church of Notre Dame to witness the marriage of a rich young lady of the city—albeit ill-favoured—to a certain Venetian, a factor in the house of the Foulcres. Amongst the guests there was not one good-looking woman. This family is a very numerous one; they are all very rich, and hold the highest position in this city. We visited two apartments in their house, one high, of grand measurement, and paved with marble, and the other low-ceilinged, enriched with medals, both ancient and modern, and having a small room at the end. ”

“ M. de Montaigne, who slept in a room with a stove, was loud in its praises, saying that all night he felt a pleasant moderate warmth. In warming yourself you burn neither your face nor your boots, and are free from the smoke of a French fireplace. At home we put on our warm furred dressing-gowns when we enter our apartments, but here people appear in doublet and bareheaded in the warm rooms, and put on thick garments before going into the air. ”

“ Je passay à Trente nullement agréable—et si ce n’estoit pour ce qu’elle est demy Italienne, me rejouissait de sortir de la petite barbarie et beuvette universelle, je n’en parlerois pas: ne trouvant point que tous les mathematiciens de nostre temps puissent jamais si bien trouver le mouvement perpetuel que les Allemans le font faire à leur goblets ... cette si grand frequentation de bouteils obscurcit tellement leurs autres belles parties que cela les rends méprisables et inaccostables de tout le monde. ”

“ We spent one more day at Basle, and on the next after dinner we took the road along the Rhine for some two leagues. Then we left it on our left hand and traversed a fertile country. In these parts springs abound, and no village or crossroads lack fair running water; in Basle indeed they number some three hundred. Balconies are so common in all houses, even in Lorraine, that in building they always leave between the windows of the chambers doorways looking over the streets, with the view of letting a balcony be built thereto at some future time. ”

“ The streets are narrow, and there is no fine public place, but we still found fountains, running water, paintings, and glass windows. Wine is so plentiful that they supply the whole of Germany with what it needs, and the bread eaten in these mountains is the best in the world. The church is a very fine one, and possesses amongst other things a wooden organ, which is very high and placed close to the crucifix by the great altar. ”

“ Seeing that he must almost always have been in pain, or at least discomfort, and that the inconveniences of travel were in themselves no light burden in these days, the constant cheerfulness of his temper, and his freshness of sentiment and speech, whenever he chanced to be brought face to face with some attractive experience, prove what a sweet and happy nature his must have been. ”

“ They gave me for M. de Montaigne white sheets trimmed with lace, four fingers wide, as is the custom of most towns in Germany. All night long men go about the streets crying the hour. Everywhere we have been they have the fashion of serving the fish the same time as the meat; but, as far as we saw, they offer no meat on fish days. On the Monday we departed, travelling along the right bank of the Inn through a fair plain for two leagues until we reached Hala. ”

“ The habit of the place is to take a bath two or three times a day. Some take their meals in the bath, where they are cupped and scarified, and do not drink the waters except after a purge. If they drink at all, they take a glass [Pg 47] or two in the bath. They deemed the practice of M. de Montaigne a mighty strange one, to wit that, without any preparatory medicine, he should take nine glasses of water, amounting to a potful, every morning at seven, and dine at mid-day; that on the days when he bathed—every other one—he should fix upon four o’clock, and only stay about an hour in the water. ”

“ M. de Montaigne held a conversation with this minister after he left the church, and was informed that the ministers receive no stipend from the church, their salary being paid by the Senate as a public charge; that there was a greater crowd of worshippers in this one church than in two or three of the Catholic churches together. We did not see a single handsome woman. The women wear a vast variety of attire, and in the case of the men it is a hard matter to say who is noble and who is not, forasmuch as all sorts of men wear bonnets of velvet and carry swords by the side. ”

“ We entered Plommieres on Friday the 16th of September 1580, at two o’clock in the afternoon. It is on the borders of Lorraine and Germany, situated in a chasm [Pg 46] between divers lofty scarped hills, which close it in on all sides. At the bottom of this valley several springs, cold and hot as well, flow forth. The hot water has neither smell nor taste, and is by nature as hot as any one can endure to drink: so much so that M. de Montaigne was obliged to pass it from glass to glass. ”

“ And a Swiss will always be provided with a knife with which he will eat everything, and never put his fingers in his plate.
In almost all the towns the proper arms of the place are displayed, and above them those of the Emperor and of the house of Austria, but the greater part of the towns have been detached from the archduke aforesaid by ill policy. They say that all members of the Austrian house, except the Catholic king, have been brought to great poverty, even the Emperor,45 who is held very lightly in Germany. ”

“ Ladies who are fain to take their bath with daintiness and decency can repair to Baden with confidence, for they will be alone in the bath, which is like an elegant cabinet, light, with glazed windows, painted panelling, and clean flooring. ”

“ In sooth there was mixed up with his judgments a certain asperity and want of regard for his own country, against which for other reasons he harboured dislike and discontent:55 certain it is that he preferred the accommodation of these lands, without comparison, to those of France, and conformed to them so far as to drink his wine without water. In drinking he never took wine for its own sake, but simply out of courtesy. Travel is more costly in High Germany than in France: for at our reckoning a man with a horse will lay out at least one crown of the sun56 per diem. ”

“ The places in the bath are set out side by side by bars suspended like those in our stables, and planks are laid over the top so as to keep off the heat of the sun and the rain. The visitors in this place maintain a singular propriety of carriage, and it is reckoned indecent for men to bathe naked or with less clothing than a little jacket, or for women to wear less than a chemise. We lodged at the “Angel,” which is the best house, because it communicates with two of the baths. The charge for lodging, when several rooms were engaged, was no more than fifteen sous a day. ”

“ Their service at table differs greatly from ours. They never mix water with their wine, and they are justified in this [Pg 70] practice, for their wines are so thin that our gentlemen found them less potent than those of Gascony when diluted. They are, however, very light and delicate.
The body-servants dine either at their master’s table or at one close by, one valet being enough to attend to the high table, seeing that each gentleman has always his own goblet or silver cup beside him, wherefore the servant only needs to fill this as soon as it may be empty, without moving it. ”

“ This town (Kempten) is Lutheran, and here, as at Isne, the strange custom obtains that the Catholic church is most sumptuously served, notwithstanding the lack of worshippers. On the morrow, Thursday, a working day, the Mass was said at the abbey outside the town, as it is given in Notre Dame, at Paris, on Easter Day, with organ music, though none were present but priests. Those who dwell outside the imperial towns are not free to change their religion, and many in this case attend the service aforesaid on feast days. ”

“ Beyond these hills there is always to be seen the range of high Alps, which we left to themselves. They indeed bar the issue from this pass, so that the traveller has continually to return to the course of the stream, and to emerge again at some turn or other. This county of Tirol, which yields no revenue except from the mountains, is worth three hundred thousand florins a year to the archduke, more than he gets from all the rest of his dominions. ”

“ The bread is the best to be had anywhere, and the wines good. In this country the wine is, for the most part, white, and what we drank was not grown near Augsburg, but five or six days’ journey distant. For every hundred florins which an innkeeper lays out in wine, the city government takes sixty as a tax, and half this amount is demanded of a private person who only buys for his own consumption. In many places they still retain the custom of putting perfumes in the bed-chambers and in the stoves. ”

“ In our lodging there was a machine made of iron fixed so as to reach down to the bottom of a very deep well. Then up above a servant, by working a handle which moves the machinery up and down within a space of three or four feet, produces a pressure on the water at the bottom of the well, and propels it by the pistons of the machine aforesaid, so that it is forced to ascend by a leaden pipe, which takes it to the kitchens and whithersoever else it may be needed. They have a paid cleaner who puts in order immediately any befoulment of the walls. ”

“ Marriages of Catholics with Lutherans are common, and the one most keenly set on marriage commonly conforms to the faith of the other. There are thousands of marriages of this sort. Our host was a Catholic and his wife a Lutheran. Here they clean the glasses with a hairbrush fixed to the end of a stick. According to report, excellent houses may be bought for forty or fifty crowns apiece. The city guard did M. de Montaigne and M. d’Estissac the honour of presenting to them fourteen large vessels of wine for supper. ”

“ When the hour strikes one of them is bound to cry out at the top of his voice to the other, and ask what is the hour, whereupon the other in like manner tells him the hour, and adds that he is keeping good watch. The women do their washing in the open in the public place, bringing out their little wooden tubs to the river side where they heat water and do their work excellently; they also clean the earthenware far better than do our French women in the inns. Here each chambermaid and each valet has a special charge. ”

“ Again, he shows a little resentment at finding himself surrounded by such a crowd of Frenchmen as he found in Rome. He is full of praise of the iron work of Switzerland, and of the cookery as well. The bed-chambers in Germany did not always please him, but he could not say too much in favour of the porcelain stoves and the coverlets stuffed with feathers; and when he found the charges at the baths of Baden a little arbitrary, he adds that he would have fared no better in France. He describes the private houses round Constance as being far superior to the parallel class of house in France ”

“ Baden is a Catholic town, under protection of the eight39 Swiss cantons, in which divers great gatherings of princes have taken place. We did not lodge in the town but in the suburb, which lies at the foot of the mountain on the bank of the Limmat, a stream, or rather torrent, which flows out of the Lake of Zürich. There are two or three uncovered public baths, which are frequented only by poor folk. ”

“ Amongst the people of the place it is chiefly used in the bath, in which they subject themselves also to cupping and bleeding, so that I have at times seen the water in the two public baths the colour of blood. Those who drink it by habit take a glass or two at [Pg 80] the most. The guests as a rule stay six or seven weeks, and some or other frequent the baths all through the summer. No country sends so many visitors as Germany, from whence come great crowds. ”

“ In the world of literature there are many instances which exhibit the personality of a particular writer identified so completely with certain of his works that he is, so to speak, divorced from all association with any others, however great their merit, which he may have left behind him. ”

“ Let it be known that corrective discipline for light offences shall remain as heretofore in the hands of the Germans, who are enjoined to enforce observation of all ceremonies, regulations, and police, which have hitherto been used for the seemly maintenance of the baths aforesaid, and for the punishment of offences committed by those of their own nation, without granting exception to any person by the payment of ransom, and without using blasphemy or other irreverent remarks against the Catholic Church and the traditions of the same. ”

“ One of the most learned men of the place had a conversation with M. de Montaigne, and told him, amongst other matters, that in truth the people of the town were not over well disposed to our Court, forasmuch as whenever he had listened to discourse concerning an alliance with our king, the majority of the people were always disposed to break it, but that by the intervention of certain rich citizens the opposite policy had hitherto been adopted. ”

“ When it stops the machine has to be wound up afresh. As to smoke-jacks we saw several of these. So great is the abundance of iron that, besides fitting gratings of divers sorts to their windows and doors, they cover even the wooden shutters with plates of iron. Here we came again into the land of vines, which we had lost sight of since we quitted Augsburg. Round about these parts most of the houses have every storey vaulted. In Germany they do what we [Pg 175] cannot do in France, to wit, they use hollow tiles to cover the narrowest slopes of roofing, as in their clock towers. ”