Don't Count Your Blessings Too Early — The Essays of Montaigne

The very children, Montaigne says, know the story of King Croesus. Taken prisoner by Cyrus and condemned to die, he cries out "O Solon, Solon!" on the way to execution. Cyrus sends to ask what it means. Croesus answers that he now finds Solon's teaching true to his cost: men, however fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives. Human things, on very light and trivial occasions, change into a quite contrary condition. Agesilaus, hearing someone call the young King of Persia happy for coming so early to so mighty a kingdom, answers that Priam was not unhappy at his years. Kings of Macedon, successors to Alexander, become joiners and scriveners at Rome. A tyrant of Sicily becomes a pedant at Corinth. Pompey, conqueror of half the world, ends a miserable suppliant to the rascally officers of a king of Egypt; five or six months of prolonged life cost him that. In their fathers' days Ludovico Sforza, tenth Duke of Milan, dies a wretched prisoner at Loches after ten years in captivity, the worst part of his fortune. The fairest of all queens, widow to the greatest king in Europe, comes to die by the hand of an executioner.

Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise the last hour, and in a moment overthrows what she was so many years in building. Solon's advice may be taken in that sense. But Solon was a philosopher, and with that sort of men the favours and disgraces of fortune stand for nothing. Montaigne thinks he had a further aim. The very felicity of life, which depends upon the tranquillity of a well-descended spirit and the assurance of a well-ordered soul, ought never to be attributed to any man till he has first been seen to play the last, and hardest, act of his part. There may be disguise in all the rest. Fine philosophical discourses can be put on when accident does not touch us to the quick. In this last scene of death there is no more counterfeiting. We must speak out plain and discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot.

Wherefore at this last, all the other actions of our life ought to be tried and sifted. It is the master-day, the day that is judge of all the rest. To death Montaigne refers the assay of the fruit of all his studies: they will then see whether his discourses came only from his mouth or from his heart. He has seen many by their death give a good or an ill repute to their whole life. Scipio, the father-in-law of Pompey, in dying well removed the ill opinion till then conceived of him. Epaminondas, asked whether he, Chabrias, or Iphicrates stood highest, said they must first be seen to die. Montaigne has also seen three of the most execrable persons he knew die a regular, composed death, even to perfection. There are brave and fortunate deaths too: he has seen death cut the thread of a prodigious advancement, with so glorious an end that the interruption seemed higher than the career still aimed at. In the judgment he makes of another man's life, he always observes how that man carried himself at his death. The principal concern he has for his own is that he may die well, patiently and tranquilly.