No man is so evil that he should meddle with memory.
For I recognize almost none in myself, and believe that there is no other in the world so monstrous in this failure. I have all my other faculties, vile and common. But in my lack of memory, I am singular and very rare, and worthy to gain thereby name and reputation. There are, of course, natural inconveniences that I suffer because of it. Plato is right to name memory a great and powerful goddess—if in my country they want to say that a man has no sense, they say that he has no memory, and when I complain about the defect of mine, they reprimand me and look down on me, as if I were accusing myself of insanity.
They do not see the difference between memory and comprehension, which makes my situation worse. But in this sense, they are wrong, because I see that the reverse is true, that excellent memories sometimes lead to poor judgment. And they wrong me another way, because I have no greater talent than being a good friend, yet a poor memory is often equated with ingratitude. Sometimes my lack of memory is considered a defect of conscience, as if I had willfully forgotten prayers or promises. Some say that I do not remember friends or to keep a secret or confidence.
These charges are unfair. Certainly I can easily forget, but I do not fail to fulfill my duties of friendship. Be content with my misery, do not compound it by assuming malice, because I lack a malicious nature. No, my memory issues are cause enough for consolation.
First, because this personal flaw exacerbates another of my flaws, that of ambition. My lack of memory prevents me from negotiating in the world. While my compensations for lack of memory have strengthened some other functions, my negotiating skills have weakened. I would happily let my mind and judgment demure and follow the lead of others, without exerting so much energy, if I could just remember all of the witty, memorable quotes, foreign inventions and opinions stored in memory. Because I lack memory, my speeches are shorter. With more memory, I could deafen my friends with chatter, heating up my discourse.
In truth, the chattering of many is pitiful. Some of my private friends show off their memories with narratives filled with vain remembrances, sometimes so overpacked with detail they ruin a good story. It is difficult to tell someone to arrest the narrative flow once you get their gist. Nowhere is the strength of a horse more evident when it makes a clean and clear halt. Even among the most relevant, I see some who want to and cannot give up their race. While they are looking for a way to end, they go about babbling and dawdling like men who are overcome with weakness. Above all, the most dangerous are old men who well remember too much of their past and have forgotten how often their tales have been told. Many pleasant stories have become boring in the mouth of a lord, everyone in the audience having already been regaled of the tale a hundred times.
Second, because of my memory issues, I hold fewer grudges. I would need a protocol, like Darius, so as not to forget the offense he had received from the Athenians. A page would need to whisper three times in my ear: Sire, remember the Athenians. The places and books I see again always amuse me with fresh novelty. And there is wisdom to the claim that anyone who lacks a firm memory should not attempt to lie. While grammarians make a distinction between telling a lie and lying, I simply state that to tell a lie is to say something false that is taken to be true.
The Latin word for lie, from which our French language is derived, is going against one’s conscience. This refers to those who knowingly state falsehoods. They can either invent a story out of nothing or alter and disguise the truth. When they alter the truth, it is hard for them to keep it from unraveling, because once truth is lodged in memory and made an impression upon it, it enters the path of knowledge and science and becomes difficulty to overcome the imagination, and does not have the firm footing of the first, true learning. Those who invent from whole cloth have less reason to fear getting it wrong. However, even this, because it is a vain and ungraspable element, readily escapes the memory if it is not well secured.
I have often seen the experience, and pleasantly, at the expense of those who profess to form their speech in no other way than according to how it serves the business they are negotiating, and how it pleases the great people to whom they speak. For these circumstances to which they want to subject their faith and their conscience, being subject to many changes, their words must diversify when and when; whence it happens that of the same thing they say sometimes gray, sometimes yellow; to such a man of one kind, to such a man of another; and if by fortune these men bring back in booty their instructions so contrary, what becomes of this fine art? Besides what they unwisely destroy themselves so often: for what memory could suffice them to remember so many different forms, which they have forged on the same subject?
I have seen many in my time envy the reputation of this fine kind of prudence, who do not see that, if the reputation is there, the effect cannot be there. In truth, lying is a cursed vice. We are men, and we hold on to one another only by our word. If we knew its horror and its weight, we would pursue it more justly than other crimes. I find that we usually have fun chastising children for innocent mistakes that are very inappropriate, and that we torment them for reckless actions that have neither impression nor consequence. Lying alone and, a little below that, opinionatedness seem to me to be the ones whose birth and progress we should fight at all costs. They grow when and with them.
And since we have given language such a false turn, it is amazing how impossible it is to get it back. As a result, we see honest men, moreover, subject to it and enslaved by it. I have a good tailor’s boy whom I never hear tell the truth, not even when it is useful to him. If, like the truth, lies had only one face, we would be on better terms. For we would take for certain the opposite of what the liar would say. But the reverse of the truth has a hundred thousand faces and an indefinite field.
The Pythagoreans make good certain and finite, evil infinite and uncertain. A thousand routes lead away from the unknown, one of them goes. Of course I do not believe that I can get the better of myself, to guarantee an obvious and extreme danger by a brazen and solemn lie. An ancient father said that we are better off in the company of a familiar dog than in that of a man whose language is unknown to us.
So that an outsider may not be in another’s place. (Pliny)
And how much false language is less sociable than silence.
King Francis I boasted of having trapped the noted orator Francisca Taverna, ambassador of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, by this means. Taverna was dispatched to apologize to the King on his master’s behalf on a matter of great consequence. The King, who had recently been expelled from Italy, kept a gentleman there on his behalf in order to maintain some intelligence. He was ostensibly an ambassador, but more accurately a spy, because he pretended to be there for his own private business. This presence was especially important because the Duke of Milan was negotiating the marriage of his niece, princess of Denmark and Dowager Duchess of Lorraine. So he could not be seen to have any dealings or direct conversations with the French without it being to his disadvantage.
A gentleman from Milan, named Merveille, who was a stable squire to the King, was appointed to this commission. This gentleman carried secret credential letters and ambassadorial instructions, and with other letters of recommendation to the Duke in favor of his particular business, masking his intentions. He met with the Duke for so long, however, that some suspicion arose on the part of the Emperor. Terrified of having the subterfuge discovered, the Duke had Merveille falsely accused of murder and then beheaded after a two-day show trial.
The Duke appeared before the King was a long counterfeit retelling of the tale, but the King had already spoken to all the princes of Christendom and demanded an explanation. The Duke claimed that his master had never taken Merveille, who as a private gentleman and his subject, had come to Milan on business and had never lived there under any other guise, even disavowing having known that he was in the service of the King’s household or that he knew him, and he certainly never took him for an ambassador.
The King, in turn, pressed the Duke with various objections and requests, charging him with every conceivable offense, finally inquiring what drove him to carry out the execution at night, and in secret. To which the poor man, embarrassed, replied, to be honest, that out of respect for His Majesty, the Duke he would have been very sorry if such an execution had been carried out during the day. Everyone can imagine how he felt walking into such a contradiction, right before the nose of King Francis.
Pope Julius II dispatched an ambassador to the King of England to incite an attack against the French crown. The King told this ambassador why it would be difficult to fight such a powerful king. Inappropriately, the ambassador immediately agreed with the King and promised to pass on the concerns to the Pope. But from this agreeableness, the King concluded that this ambassador leaned towards France. He passed on these concerns to the Pope, which led to the ambassador’s property being confiscated and him barely escapaing with his life.