Il diario dei viaggi di Montaigne in Italia, attraverso la Svizzera e la Germania, nell'anno…

him more than the ceremony of circumcision, which he witnessed in the house of a Jew in Rome, and described in minute detail and at great length. The main object of Montaigne’s journey was to visit certain foreign baths, with the hope of getting relief from the pains which he suffered through gall-stone and gravel. Seeing that he must almost always have been in pain, or at least discomfort, and that the inconveniences of travel were in themselves no light burden in these days, the constant cheerfulness of his temper, and his freshness of sentiment and speech, whenever he chanced to be brought face to face with some attractive experience, prove what a sweet and happy nature his must have been. He records how on the road from Terni to Spoleto he was suffering from colic, which had vexed him for the last four-and-twenty hours, but this plague did not prevent him from expressing his delight over the exquisite scenery on either hand. Travel by itself was to him the keenest pleasure, as he shows in the quaint remarks he lets fall when journeying from Trent to Rovere. His companions were seemingly aggrieved that he occasionally led them a wild-goose chase, and brought them back to the point from which they started; but he gaily assured them that he never missed his way, because, as he never made plans, the place in which he might find himself at sunset must needs be the legitimate end of the day’s travel. Perhaps of all the humours he displayed _en route_, the most marked was his insatiable curiosity and his avidity of fresh experience. He met the Pope (Gregory XIII.), the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Duke of Ferrara, and cardinals, ambassadors, chancellors, and officials out of number, and hardly one of these got rid of him without having to listen and reply to divers well-judged questions. He even went so far as to pay visits to the lodgings of the fashionable _cortigiane_ in Rome, as Coryat did at Venice.…