["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task." --Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.] But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and imbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and esteem of ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now: "Ad unum Mollis opus." ["Fit but for once."--Horace, Epod., xii. 15.] I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear: "Fuge suspicari, Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas Claudere lustrum." ["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed." --Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.] Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable, without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a moment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and blushes: "Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa Alba rosa." ["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed with the damask rose."--AEneid, xii. 67.] Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling impertinence, "Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus," ["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger." --Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.] has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night. When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and unkindly: "Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:" [The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram in the same collection (Ad Matrones). They describe untranslatably Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous passage.]