It is therefore vain, indeed tactlessly and ridiculously vain, for Montaigne to speak favorably of himself all the time; but it is still more extravagantly vain for this author to describe his faults, for if one looks at them seriously, one will see that he reveals only those faults glorified in the world because of the corruption of the age, that he freely attributes to himself those faults that might enable him to pass as a sound mind or that give him the air of a gentleman, and that his intention in this fraudulently honest confession of his disorders is to make us believe him more willingly when he speaks to his advantage.