Abstract: The conception of History changes little from one book of the Essais to another: seen as a mirror of human discrepancies between intentions and actions, History is fragmented into many independent examples. But the third book makes more explicit a latent contradiction specific to the books I and II: if it is more urgent than ever to “keep a register” as the Historians do, it is paradoxically to assert more firmly the singularity of the “essay”. Montaigne invents an alternative historicity.
