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The estate of Vignay seems to me a little kingdom, if any man may consider himself master of anything here below. . . . I will tell you more; this retreat, which satisfies my heart, also flatters my vanity; I like to imagine myself in the wake of those famous exiles of Athens or Rome whom their virtues rendered formidable to their fellow-citizens.
A great, good man, a great functionary, and a great scholar, in disgrace for six years past, the Chancellor Michael de l'Hospital, received about this time, in his retreat at Vignay, a visit from a great philosopher, Michael de Montaigne, "anxious," said the visitor, "to come and testify to you the honor and reverence with which I regard your competence and the special qualities which are in you; for, as to the extraneous and the fortuitous, it is not to my taste to put them down in the account."
One is of the fourteenth century and contains a translation by Jean Belet; the other, younger by a century, presents the version of Jacques Vignay.
From the moment that l'Hopital entered upon his duties he took measures against the Inquisition, which the Cardinal de Lorraine was desirous of introducing into France; and he thwarted so successfully all the anti-gallican policy of the Guises, and proved himself so true a Frenchmen, that in order to subdue him he was exiled, within three months of his appointment, to his country-seat of Vignay, near Etampes.
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