"'And then, entre nous, could you not bring with you a Lais, a Phryne or two, in their original costumes as they allured all you naughty Greeks in times bygone? It would be charmingly revolting. When I dimly represent to myself how the young eagles of society will tremble with pleasure at the thought of adding to their lists of conquests, in pink and white, a Corinthian or Athenian demi-mondaine of two thousand years ago, I feel that I am a Personality.
"'If I could offer such an unheard-of opportunity I should get first leaders in the Manchester Guardian and mild rebukes, full of secret zest, in the godly Guardian; let alone other noble papers read by the goody-goody ones. The Record would send me a testimonial signed by the leading higher critics. I should be the heroine of the day and of the night.'"
The gods and heroes encouraged Alcibiades by their gay laughter to tell them all that happened at the "At Home" of his American lady friend, and he continued as follows:
"When the evening of the Greek soirée came, I went to the drawing-room in company with Phryne and Lais, who were most charmingly dressed as flute-girls. When we entered the large room we saw a vast assembly of women and men, mostly dressed in the preposterous fashion of the little ones. The women looked like zoological specimens, some resembling Brazilian butterflies, others reptiles, others again snakes or birds of prey. The upper part of their bodies was uncovered, no matter whether the rest of the body had gone through countless campaigns enlivened by numerous capitulations, or whether it had just expanded into the buds of rosy spring. The men looked like the clowns in our farces. They wore a costume that no Greek slave would have donned. It was all black and all of the same cut. Instead of looking enterprising, they all looked like undertakers. Each of them made a nervous attempt to appear as inoffensive, and as self-effacing as possible; just like undertakers entering the house where a person had died.
"When we entered the room the whole assembly rose and cried: 'Cairo—Cairo!' (they were told to cry Chaire—but in vain). I could distinctly hear remarks such as these: 'How weird!'—'Is it not uncanny?'—'It makes me feel creepy!' After a few minutes there was a deep silence, and an elderly gentleman came up through the middle of the room and, bowing first to us and then to the people assembled, stepped up to the platform and began a speech in a strange language, which I vaguely remembered having heard before.
"Phryne suddenly began to giggle, and so irresistible was her laughter that both Lais and I could not but join her, especially when in words broken by continuous laughter she told us:
"'The old gent pretends to speak Athenian Greek!'
"It was indeed too absurd for words. There was especially that vulgar sound i constantly recurring where we never dreamt of using such a sound; and our beautiful ypsilon (γ) he pronounced like the English u, which is like serving champagne in soup-plates. When he stumbled over an ou, he pronounced it with a sound to which dentists are better accustomed than any Athenian ever was, and our deep and manly ch (χ) he castrated down to a lisping k. I remember Carians in Asia Minor who talked like that. Our noble and incomparable language, orchestral, picturesque, sculptural, became like the Palace of Minos which they are excavating at present: in its magnificent halls, eaten by weather and worm, one sees only poor labourers and here and there a directing mind.
"I imagined that the good man meant by his speech to welcome me back into the world, and so when my turn to answer him came, I got up and, leaning partly on Phryne and partly on Lais, who stood near me, I replied as follows, after speaking for a little while in Attic, in the language of the country:
"'It is indeed with no ordinary satisfaction that I beg to thank you, O Sophist, and you here present for the pleasant reception that you have given us. My lot has on the whole not been altogether bad. Your studious men, it is true, affect to condemn me, my policy, and my private life. Perhaps they will allow me to remark that the irregularity of my past morals is a matter of temptations. Diogenes used to tell us that one of my sternest historian-critics in Syracuse left his wife, children and house on being for once tempted by the chamber-maid of one of my passing caprices; and the historians of your race who so gravely decry a Madame de Montespan would, did Madame only smile at them, incontinently fall into a fit of hopeless moral collapse.