But the testimony of Montaigne himself upsets the theory of this coincidence; written in his own hand upon a manuscript, partly autograph, of the treatise by De la Boetie, is a statement that it was the work "of a lad of sixteen." La Boetie was born at Sarlat on the 1st of November, 1530, and was, therefore, sixteen in 1546, two years before the insurrection at Bordeaux.

The _Contre-un,_ besides, is a work of pure theory and general philosophy, containing no allusion at all to the events of the day, to the sedition in Guienne no more than to any other.

This little work owed to Montaigne's affectionate regard for its author a great portion of its celebrity.
Published for the first time, in 1578, in the _Memoires de l'Etat de France,_ after having up to that time run its course without any author's name, any title, or any date, it was soon afterwards so completely forgotten that when, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Cardinal de Richelieu for the first time heard it mentioned, and "sent one of his gentlemen over the whole street of Saint-Jacques to inquire for _la Servitude volontaire,_ all the publishers said, 'We don't know what it is.' The son of one of them recollected something about it, and said to the cardinal's gentleman, 'Sir, there is a book-fancier who has what you seek, but with no covers to it, and he wants five pistoles for it.' 'Very well,' said the gentleman;" and the Cardinal do Richelieu paid fifty francs for the pleasure of reading the little political pamphlet by "a lad of sixteen," which probably made very little impression upon him, but which, thanks to the elegance and vivacity of its style, and the affectionate admiration of the greatest independent thinker of the sixteenth century, has found a place in the history of French literature.
[_Memoires de Tallemant des Reaux,_ t.i.

p.

395.] [Illustration: Anne de Montmorency----235] History must do justice even to the men whose brutal violence she stigmatizes and reproves.