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"Ces gens sont-ils fols, Milord, de s'imaginer que je commisse la trahison de tourner en leur faveur mes armes, et de" "Je vous prie de ne me plus fatiguer avec de pareilles propositions, et de me croire assez honnete homme pour ne point violer mes engagements. Here is a catastrophe for the Two Britannic Excellencies, and the Cause of Freedom! Of which what hope is there!
At the Tour de Fols, near St Bernard, M. de Saussure found an appearance the most distinct of its kind, and worthy to be recorded as a leading fact in matters of geology. Voyages dans les Alpes, Tome 2d. pag. 454.
The De Chisseys, whose names may be found among the female prebends of Château-Chalon, with its necessary sixteen quarters, filled a considerable place in the history of the Comté from the Crusades downwards, and known as les Fols de Chissey, the brave and dashing, and witty De Chisseys qualities which no doubt were possessed by the poor young man for whom the fair Chatelaine drained the Val d'Amour.
But directly afterward, on the other side, came Montaigne, whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at negatives without any apparatus of method. A certain keen narrowness of nature will secure a man from many absurd beliefs which the larger soul, vibrating to more manifold influences, would have a long struggle to part with. And so we find the charming, chatty Montaigne—in one of the brightest of his essays, “Des Boiteux,” where he declares that, from his own observation of witches and sorcerers, he should have recommended them to be treated with curative hellebore—stating in his own way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men should lie, or that their imaginations should deceive them, than that a human body should be carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a chimney by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad business to persuade oneself that the test of truth lies in the multitude of believers—“en une prosse où les fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre.” Ordinarily, he has observed, when men have something stated to them as a fact, they are more ready to explain it than to inquire whether it is real: “ils passent pardessus les propositions, mais ils examinent les conséquences; ils laissent les choses, et courent aux causes.” There is a sort of strong and generous ignorance which is as honorable and courageous as science—“ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n’y a pas moins de science qu’
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