The Essays, vol 7 | Page 8

a while considered her

and perceiving that she halted: "Come, tie up, tie up," said he, she
limps." And they tell another story of the same kind of a fellow in
Denmark, who being condemned to lose his head, and the like
condition being proposed to him upon the scaffold, refused it, by
reason the girl they offered him had hollow cheeks and too sharp a nose.
A servant at Toulouse being accused of heresy, for the sum of his belief
referred himself to that of his master, a young student, prisoner with
him, choosing rather to die than suffer himself to be persuaded that his
master could err. We read that of the inhabitants of Arras, when Louis
XI. took that city, a great many let themselves be hanged rather than
they would say, "God save the King." And amongst that mean-souled
race of men, the buffoons, there have been some who would not leave
their fooling at the very moment of death. One that the hang man was
turning off the ladder cried: Launch the galley," an ordinary saying of
his. Another, whom at the point of death his friends had laid upon a bed
of straw before the fire, the physician asking him where his pain lay:
"Betwixt the bench and the fire," said he, and the priest, to give him
extreme unction, groping for his feet which his pain had made him pull
up to him: "You will find them," said he, "at the end of my legs." To
one who being present exhorted him to recommend himself to God:
"Why, who goes thither?" said he; and the other replying: "It will
presently be yourself, if it be His good pleasure." "Shall I be sure to be
there by to-morrow night?" said he. "Do, but recommend yourself to
Him," said the other, "and you will soon be there." "I were best then,"
said he, "to carry my recommendations myself."
In the kingdom of Narsingah to this day the wives of their priests are
buried alive with the bodies of their husbands; all other wives are burnt
at their husbands' funerals, which they not only firmly but cheerfully
undergo. At the death of their king, his wives and concubines, his
favourites, all his officers, and domestic servants, who make up a
whole people, present themselves so gaily to the fire where his body is
burnt, that they seem to take it for a singular honour to accompany their
master in death. During our late wars of Milan, where there happened
so many takings and retakings of towns, the people, impatient of so
many changes of fortune, took such a resolution to die, that I have
heard my father say he there saw a list taken of five-and-twenty masters

of families who made themselves away in one week's time: an incident
somewhat resembling that of the Xanthians, who being besieged by
Brutus, fell--men, women, and children--into such a furious appetite of
dying, that nothing can be done to evade death which they did not to
avoid life; insomuch that Brutus had much difficulty in saving a very
small number.--["Only fifty were saved."--Plutarch, Life of Brutus, c.
8.]
Every opinion is of force enough to cause itself to be espoused at the
expense of life. The first article of that valiant oath that Greece took
and observed in the Median war, was that every one should sooner
exchange life for death, than their own laws for those of Persia. What a
world of people do we see in the wars betwixt the Turks and the Greeks,
rather embrace a cruel death than uncircumcise themselves to admit of
baptism? An example of which no sort of religion is incapable.
The kings of Castile having banished the Jews out of their dominions,
John, King of Portugal, in consideration of eight crowns a head, sold
them a retreat into his for a certain limited time, upon condition that the
time fixed coming to expire they should begone, and he to furnish them
with shipping to transport them into Africa. The day comes, which
once lapsed they were given to understand that such as were afterward
found in the kingdom should remain slaves; vessels were very slenderly
provided; and those who embarked in them were rudely and
villainously used by the passengers, who, besides other indignities, kept
them cruising upon the sea, one while forwards and another backwards,
till they had spent all their provisions, and were constrained to buy of
them at so dear a rate and so long withal, that they set them not on
shore till they were all stripped to the very shirts. The news of this
inhuman usage being brought to those who remained behind, the
greater part of them resolved upon slavery and some made a show of
changing