“Just what you have felt—and you too,” looking at Polyœnus. “Aye, and you also, very sage philosopher;” and turning short round to Theon, “what you have to feel, if you have to feel, if you have not yet felt—that I was vastly witty, vastly amusing, and vastly beautiful.”
“And do you think,” said the Gargettian, “when we feel all this, we can’t be angry with you?”
“Nay, what do you think? But no, no, I know you all better than you know yourselves. And I think you cannot, or if you can, ’tis as the poet, who curses the muse he burns to propitiate. Oh! philosophy! philosophy! thou usest hard maxims and showest a grave face, yet thy maxims are but words, and thy face but a mask. A skilful histrion, who, when the buskin is off, paint, plaster, and garment thrown aside, stands no higher, no fairer, and no more mighty, than the youngest, poorest, and simplest of thy gaping worshippers. Ah! friends! laugh and frown; but show me the man, the wisest, the gravest, or the sourest, that a bright pair of eyes can’t make a fool of.”
“Ah! you proud girl,” said Hermachus, “tremble! remember the blue-eyed Sappho died at last for a Phaon.”
“Well, if such be my fate, I must submit. I do not deny, because I have been wise hitherto, that I may not turn fool with the philosophers, before I die.”
“What an excellent school for the rearing of youth,” said the Master, “the old Pythagorean must think mine.”
“Judging from me as a specimen, you mean. And trust me now, father, I am the best. Do I not practise what you preach? What you show the way to, do I not possess? Look at my light foot, look in my laughing eye, read my gay heart, and tell—if pleasure be not mine. Confess then, that I take a shorter cut to the goal than your wiser scholars, aye, than your wisest self. You study, you lecture, you argue, you exhort. And what is it all for? as if you could not be good without so much learning, and happy without so much talking. Here am I—I think I am very good, and I am quite sure I am very happy; yet I never wrote a treatise in my life, and can hardly listen to one without a yawn.”
“Theon,” said Epicurus, smiling, “you see now the priestess of our midnight orgies.”
“Ah! poor youth, you must have found the Garden but a dull place in my absence. But have patience, it will be better in future.”
“More dangerous,” said Polyœnus.