When I Am Playing With My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing With Me? In the year 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chateau to brood on his own private grief - the deaths of his best friends, his brother, and his first-born child. This title offers a celebration of perhaps one of the most joyful and yet profound of all Renaissance writers. Full description