“No, my young friend; and shall I tell you why? Because he told you absurdities. Let an impostor keep to probability, and he will hardly impose. By dealing in the marvellous, he tickles the imagination, and carries away the judgment; and judgment once gone, what shall save even a wise man from folly?”
“I should truly rejoice, to find the Gargettian’s doctrine less monstrous than I have hitherto thought them. I say less monstrous, for you would not wish me to think them good.”
“I would wish you to think nothing good, or bad either, upon my decision. The first and the last thing I would say to man is, think for yourself! It is a bad sentence of the Pythagoreans, ‘The master said so.’ If the young disciple you mentioned should ever succeed in your conversion, believe in the metempsychosis for some other reason than that Pythagoras ‘taught it.’”
“But, if I may ask, do you think well of Epicurus?”
“I meant not to make an apology for Epicurus, only to give a caution against Timocrates—but see, we are in the city; and fortunately so, for it is pretty nigh dark. I have a party of young friends awaiting me, and, but that you may be apprehensive of nocturnal orgies, I would ask you to join us.”
“I shall not fear them where I have such a conductor,” replied the youth, laughing.
“I do not think it quite so impossible, however, as you seem to do,” said the sage, laughing in his turn, with much humor, and entering a house as he spoke; then throwing open with one arm a door, and with the other gently drawing the youth along with him, “I am Epicurus!”
CHAPTER II.
The astonished, the affrighted Theon started from the arm of the sage, and, staggering backwards, was saved, probably, from falling, by a statue that stood against the wall on one side of the door: he leaned against it, pale and almost fainting. He knew not what to do, scarcely what to feel, and was totally blind to all the objects around him. His conductor, who had possibly expected his confusion, did not turn to observe it, but advanced in such a manner as to cover him from the view of the company, and, still to give time for recollection, stood receiving and returning salutations.
“Well met, my sons! and I suppose you say well met, also. Are you starving, or am I to be starved? Have you ate up the supper, or only sat longing for it, cursing my delay?”