Your True Intentions Matter Most — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne opens with the saying that death discharges all obligations, then shows how people twist it. Henry VII promised Philip not to harm the Duke of Suffolk, then ordered his son to execute the duke after his own death. Count Egmont asked to die first so death might release him from the pledge that drew Count Horn to surrender; Montaigne thinks death acquitted neither man cleanly.

He argues we are bound only to what we can perform, yet we are masters of nothing but the will, where duty is founded. Henry's deferred betrayal is worse than the mason who kept a royal secret for life and revealed it only at death. Others return stolen goods or settle scores in a will, which Montaigne calls too late.

He closes by resolving that his death should reveal nothing his life has not already declared openly. Intention, not timing tricks, is the measure of an action.