“I see how it is,” returned the other; “you have lost your principles, and I, my friend.”
“I do not think I have lost the first, and I am very sure you have not lost the last!”
“No!” exclaimed Cleanthes; “but I tell you, yes;” and his cheeks flushed, and his eyes flashed with indignation: “I have lost my friend, and you have lost yours. Go!” he continued, and drew himself from the arm of Theon. “Go! Cleanthes hath no fellowship with an apostate and a libertine.”
“You wrong me; and you wrong Epicurus,” said his friend, in a tone of more reproach than anger: “But I cannot blame you; yesterday I had myself been equally unjust. You must see him, you must hear him, Cleanthes. This alone can undeceive you—can convince you; convince you of my innocence, and Epicurus’s virtue.”
“Epicurus’s virtue! your innocence?—What is Epicurus to me? What is he, or should he be to you? Your innocence? And is this fastened to the mantle of Epicurus: see him to be convinced of your innocence?”
“Yes, and of your own injustice: Oh! Cleanthes, what a fool do I now know myself to have been! To have listened to the lies of Timocrates! To have believed all his absurdities! Come, my friend! come with me and behold the face of the Master he blasphemes!”
“Theon, one master, and but one master, is mine. To me, whether Timocrates exaggerate or even lie, it matters nothing.”
“It does, or it should,” said the Corinthian. “Will a disciple of Zeno not open his eyes to truth? Not see an error and atone for it, by acknowledging it? I do not ask you to be the disciple of Epicurus—I only ask you to be just to him, and that for your own sake, more than mine, or even his.”
“I see you are seduced—I see you are lost,” cried the stoic, fixing on him a look in which sorrow struggled with indignation. “I thought myself a stoic, but I feel the weakness of a woman in my eyes.—Thou wert as my brother, Theon; and thou—thou also art beguiled by the Syren—left virtue for pleasure, Zeno for Epicurus.”
“I have not left Zeno.”