‘Why, what do you know about Liddell and Scott?’
‘Nothing, thank goodness; I never had time to waste over the crooked letters. But I have heard say that prophetes means, not a foreteller, but an out-teller—one who declares the will of a deity, and interprets his oracles. Is it not so?’
‘Undeniably.’
‘And that he became a foreteller among heathens at least—as I consider, among all peoples whatsoever—because knowing the real bearing of what had happened, and what was happening, he could discern the signs of the times, and so had what the world calls a shrewd guess—what I, like a Pantheist as I am denominated, should call a divine and inspired foresight—of what was going to happen.’
‘A new notion, and a pleasant one, for it looks something like a law.’
‘I am no scollard, as they would say in Whitford, you know; but it has often struck me, that if folks would but believe that the Apostles talked not such very bad Greek, and had some slight notion of the received meaning of the words they used, and of the absurdity of using the same term to express nineteen different things, the New Testament would be found to be a much simpler and more severely philosophic book than “Theologians” (“Anthropo-sophists” I call them) fancy.’
‘Where on earth did you get all this wisdom, or foolishness?’
‘From the prophet, a fortnight ago.’
‘Who is this prophet? I will know.’
‘Then you will know more than I do. Sabina—light my meerschaum, there’s a darling; it will taste the sweeter after your lips.’ And Claude laid his delicate woman-like limbs upon the sofa, and looked the very picture of luxurious nonchalance.