Scaliger. This, I perceive, is the antechamber to your library: here are your everyday books.
Montaigne. Faith! I have no other. These are plenty, methinks; is not that your opinion?
Scaliger. You have great resources within yourself, and therefore can do with fewer.
Montaigne. Why, how many now do you think here may be?
Scaliger. I did not believe at first that there could be above fourscore.
Montaigne. Well! are fourscore few?—are we talking of peas and beans?
Scaliger. I and my father (put together) have written well-nigh as many.
Montaigne. Ah! to write them is quite another thing: but one reads books without a spur, or even a pat from our Lady Vanity. How do you like my wine?—it comes from the little knoll yonder: you cannot see the vines, those chestnut-trees are between.
Scaliger. The wine is excellent; light, odoriferous, with a smartness like a sharp child’s prattle.
Montaigne. It never goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best under the sun. I do not wonder that the Parliament of Bordeaux should be jealous of their privileges, and call it Bordeaux. Now, if you prefer your own country wine, only say it: I have several bottles in my cellar, with corks as long as rapiers, and as polished. I do not know, M. de l’Escale, whether you are particular in these matters: not quite, I should imagine, so great a judge in them as in others?