“Why,” replied Hermachus, “I believe you have at home some hundred bodies in the same predicament.”
“To be sure; and so I told the sage Pythagorean, when he looked so complacently on his twelve pieces of mechanism, and assured him that were it not for me, there would not be a single original in the Garden save the Master. I assure you, father, I gave just as matter of fact a description of your household, as I now do of the old Pythagorean’s. And, a most singular coincidence, I remember he cried, ‘Fie, fie,’ just as you did now. Once more, it was a most perfect household; with the men, all peace, method, virtue, learning, and absurdity: with the women, all silence, order, ignorance, modesty, and stupidity.”
“And pray, sister,” said Metrodorus, “what made you leave a society that afforded such food to your satire?”
“Because, brother, the richest food cloys the fastest. I passed three days to my perfect satisfaction; a fourth would have killed me.”
“And your friends, too,” said the philosopher, shaking his head.
“Killed them? They never knew they had life, till I found it out for them. No, no, I left sore hearts behind me. The Master indeed,—ah! the Master!—Poor man, shall I confess it? Before I left the house, he caught one of his pupils looking into a mirror with a candle, heard that another had stirred the fire with a sword, and oh! more dreadful than all, that a third had swallowed a bean.[[3]] If I could have staid three days longer, I might have wound my girdle round the necks of the whole dozen, brought them on my back, and laid them at the feet of Epicurus.”
[3]. Alluding to the whimsical superstitions of Pythagoras, or, perhaps it were more just to say, of his followers.
“And what said the Master all this time?” said Leontium.
“Said he? what said he? umph! I never heard what he said, for I was reading what he felt.”
“And what felt he?” asked Hermachus.