![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Previously, Montaigne had often imagined death. He was on a placid horse and expecting an easy ride when what felt like a shot from an arquebus (the firearm of the day) knocked him and his horse to the ground: "There lay the horse bowled over and stunned, and I ten or twelve paces beyond, dead, stretched on my back, my face all bruised and skinned, my sword, which I had had in my hand, more than ten paces away, my belt in pieces, having no more motion or feeling than a log." When he regained consciousness, and afterwards his memory of what had really happened, Montaigne learnt that it was not a shot, but one of his servants, a muscular man on a more powerful horse, who had mistakenly charged past and hit him. He was 36 and he liked to ride to get away from his inherited and elected responsibilities: a chateau and estate in the Dordogne and a seat in the Bordeaux parliament (or high court). B efore he was famous, the essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne brushed shoulders with death on a bridle path, some time in 1569 or early 1570. ![]()
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