The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 9

ugh I did not know so much, for he pretended otherwise: and the mischief on't is, that in this sort of war the cards are so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished f

care and affection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and expectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother and I met had so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse, or passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at last discovered it to be alarms of conscience. It se

iens animo tor

soul brandishing a s

al, ii

y to accuse him of the murder of his father. This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself, who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the sayin

lium consult

are worst to t

. Gellium

but most of all itself, for it there

in vulne

eir own lives

Geo., i

poison. In like manner, at the same time that men take delight in vice, there springs in the co

ulti, per somnia

irantes, prot

in medium pe

often talking in thei

have betrayed themsel

es long concealed."

ered these words "I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee." Epicurus said that no hiding-hole could co

haec ulti

o nocens a

ment of sin that no ma

revenge, that by its

"-Juvenal

nce; and I can truly say that I have gone through several hazards with a more steady pace in

cuique sua est, i

acto spemque

e is, so within hope o

n."-Ovid, Fa

of the money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts and disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary to be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a disgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his own hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared conscience could have counterfeited so great an assurance. He had naturally too high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius Livius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerous invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than o

ntes cogit me

the innocent lie."-Pub

charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial Alexander put upon him and the progress of h

nation, more painful than execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates execution, and perform it. I know not where I had this story, but it exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. A country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she had left to nourish them witha