SCALIGER: I know three things--wine, poetry, and the world.
MONTAIGNE: You know one too many, then. I hardly know whether I know anything about poetry; for I like Clem Marot better than Ronsard.
SCALIGER: It pleases me greatly that you like Marot. His version of the Psalms is lately set to music, and added to the New Testament of Geneva.
MONTAIGNE: It is putting a slice of honeycomb into a barrel of vinegar, which will never grow the sweeter for it.
SCALIGER: Surely, you do not think in this fashion of the New Testament?
MONTAIGNE: Who supposes it? Whatever is mild and kindly is there. But Jack Calvin has thrown bird-lime and vitriol upon it, and whoever but touches the cover dirties his fingers or burns them.
MONTAIGNE: I do not like your great men who beckon me to them, call me their begotten, their dear child, and their entrails; and, if I happen to say on any occasion, "I beg leave, sir, to dissent a little from you," stamp and cry, "The devil you do!" and whistle to the executioner.
SCALIGER: John Calvin is a grave man, orderly, and reasonable.
MONTAIGNE: In my opinion he has not the order nor the reason of my cook. Mat never twitched God by the sleeve and swore He should not have his own way.
SCALIGER: M. de Montaigne, have you ever studied the doctrine of predestination?
MONTAIGNE: I should not understand it if I had; and I would not break through an old fence merely to get into a cavern. Would it make me honester or happier, or, in other things, wiser?
SCALIGER: I do not know whether it would materially.
MONTAIGNE: I should be an egregious fool, then, to care about it. Come, walk about with me; after a ride you can do nothing better to take off fatigue. I can show you nothing but my house and my dairy.
SCALIGER: Permit me to look a little at those banners. They remind me of my own family, we being descended from the great Cane della Scala, Prince of Verona, and from the House of Hapsburg, as you must have heard from my father.
MONTAIGNE: What signifies it to the world whether the great Cane was tied to his grandmother or not? As for the House of Hapsburg, if you could put together as many such houses as would make up a city larger than Cairo, they would not be worth his study, or a sheet of paper on the table of it.