DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61669#0059
JEAN DE DINTEVILLE
CHAPTER I
The Early Life of Jean de Dinteville
N attempting to follow the career of Jean de Dinteville,
and to read aright the picture by Holbein, which is, to so
large an extent, the intimate expression of his mind, it is
necessary to step back, in imagination, into the sixteenth
century, and to see things, so far as possible, as an observer of that
day would have beheld them. Passing events present themselves to
contemporaries in proportions widely differing from those under which
they appear to the student of a later day. Circumstances which, as
they arose, assumed mountainous dimensions, have dwindled to mole-
hills with the lapse of time. Other events, which had small beginnings,
have subsequently acquired an importance undreamed of by lookers-on,
in the story of the world’s progress. Again, a third category exhibits
less divergence between the verdict of contemporary opinion and that
of posterity. In such cases, it is a less arduous task to move into the
place of the thinkers and actors of the past, and to mark with their
eyes, uninfluenced by the knowledge of later developments, the scene
that unfolded itself to their view.
Only by noting the facts of history in their relation to Dinteville’s
character and career, rather than to their intrinsic importance,1 will it
1 The letters and chronicles of the time are rich in local colouring, and are preferable
for the present object to the stately histories written in a subsequent age. The immense
stores of manuscripts preserved in the public libraries of France, especially in the Biblio-
theque Nationale at Paris, fortunately facilitate the task to a great extent. Among printed
35