People complain that his terms as mayor passed without much trace, he wrote. “That’s a good one! They accuse me of inactivity in a time when almost everyone was convicted of doing too much.” With “innovation” (that is, Protestantism) having caused such mayhem, surely it was commendable to have kept a city in a mostly uneventful state for so long. And Montaigne had long since learned that much of what passed for passionate public commitment was just showing off. People involve themselves because they want to have an air of consequence, or to advance their private interests, or simply to keep
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