. Wayfaring in France, from Auvergne to the Bay of Biscay. tained immediate permission to visit theretreat of the sixteenth-century moralist who lookedwith such clear eyes upon human life. The tower and its gateway belong to the periodwhen feudalism had lost its vitality, and life wastroubled by the vague perception of new motivesand principles. Montaigne tells us that his familyhad occupied the manor a hundred years when heentered into possession, and the style of the frag-ment that is left bears out this statement: it appearsto belong to the middle part of the fifteenth manor
. Wayfaring in France, from Auvergne to the Bay of Biscay. tained immediate permission to visit theretreat of the sixteenth-century moralist who lookedwith such clear eyes upon human life. The tower and its gateway belong to the periodwhen feudalism had lost its vitality, and life wastroubled by the vague perception of new motivesand principles. Montaigne tells us that his familyhad occupied the manor a hundred years when heentered into possession, and the style of the frag-ment that is left bears out this statement: it appearsto belong to the middle part of the fifteenth manorial houses, crenated and often 412 BY THE LOWER DORDOGNE moated, but, like this one at Montaigne, defensiverather for show than the reality, were scattered overFrance. Speaking generally, they belonged to thesmall nobility who fell under the category of thearriere-ban in time of war. In this tower Montaignehad his chapel, his bedroom—to which he retiredwhen the yearning for solitude was strong—and hislibrary. The chapel is on the ground-floor, and is. The Chateau de Montaigne after the Fire. very much what it was in Montaignes time. It issmall, but there was room enough to accommodatehis household, which was never a laroe one. Itslittle cupola connects it with the local style of archi-tecture, to which the high-swelling name of Byzan-tino-Perigourdin has been given. A small stonealtar occupies the apsidal end, and here, as in two orthree other places, the arms of Montaigne will be MONTAIGNE IN HIS TOWER 413 noted with interest by those who have read in theessays : Je porte dazur seme de trefies dor, a unepatte de lyon de mesme amide de gueules, mise en r ) jace. A man is often a sceptic on the surface and a believer underneath. Pascal has called Montaigne tin pur pyrrhonien; but Pascal himself has been accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence like Montaigne with a horror
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1913
