“But, mother, I want to know.”
“Bless me, you make me squeamish. Of course we want to know a vast number of things; and the Highest Good, I take it, is to learn to be satisfied to know nothing. Cats, dogs, donkeys, don’t worry themselves to know—and are happy. They have, then, the Summum Bonum. If you want to know more, ask the philosopher. He is paid for the purpose, and eats at our expense, and ye gods! how he eats. I believe he finds the Highest Good in the platter.”
The lady made signs, and a slave, ever on the watch, hastened to learn her desire, and at her command summoned the Stoic.
The philosopher paced the deck with his chin in the air, and came aft.
“My daughter,” said the widow, “is splitting my suffering head with questions. Pray answer her satisfactorily. Here Felicula, Procula, Lucilla, help me to the cabin.”
When the lady had withdrawn, the philosopher said:
“Lady, you will propound difficulties, and I shall be pleased to solve them.”
“I ask plain answers to plain questions,” said Domitia. “At death—what then?”
“Death, young lady, is the full stop at the end of the sentence, it is the closing of the diptychs of life, on which its story is inscribed.”
“I asked not what death is—but to what it leads?”