“To-day, you mean? Yes, I was; and heard a description of myself that might match in pleasantry with that in ‘The Clouds’[[2]] of old Socrates. Pray don’t you find it very like?” He leaned over the side of the couch, and looked in Theon’s face.
[2]. Alluding to the comedy of Aristophanes, in which Socrates was indecently ridiculed.
“I—I—” The youth stammered and looked down.
“Think it is,” said the sage, as if concluding the sentence for him.
“No, think it is not; swear it is not;” burst forth the eager youth, and looked as he would have thrown himself at the philosopher’s feet. “Oh! why did you not stand forth and silence the liar?”
“Truly, my son, the liar was too pleasant to be angry with, and too absurd to be answered.”
“And yet he was believed?”
“Of course.”
“But why then not answer him?”
“And so I do. I answer him in my life. The only way in which a philosopher should ever answer a fool, or, as in this case, a knave.”