"Ah! poor Virgil!" said Augustus, first with a smile, and then with a long, heart-felt sigh. "I wish he could have heard you, my Athenian."
"The natures of things," said the Athenian, "and the number of individuals are known and counted somewhere; the attraction of physical things is weighed in a balance somewhere, and all things are maintained in their order by limits, and protected in their relations by a measured mark, somewhere. But as I have forbidden myself this vast and difficult field, I will turn elsewhere."
"Before you turn elsewhere," exclaimed Antistius Labio, "I would fain test by a single question the soundness of the principle from which you will draw no deductions; you say all things undergo some action. Does not this imply the actual presence of some force in or upon all things?"
"It is not to be denied," answered the Athenian.
"What force," asked Labio, "is actually present in or upon inert matter?"
"The force of cohesion," replied the Athenian; "and, moreover, the force of weight, which I take to be only the same force with wider intervals ordained for its operation."
A dead pause of an instant or two followed, and was broken by Herod Agrippa, who was a person bad indeed and odious, but of great acuteness and natural abilities, exclaiming "The Athenian reminds me of the number, weight, and measure of our holy books."
"It is there, indeed, I found them," said Dionysius.
"You mentioned," observed Augustus, after musing a few seconds, "that the demonstration you gave us a while ago of a single eternal God was only one out of many. I do not want many more, nor several more; but one more, might gluttony ask of hospitality? We roam the halls of a great intellectual fortress and mental palace to-night, superior to the palace of the Mamurras."
"Has it such an impluvium, Augustus?" chuckled the old knight, caressing his white moustache.