Theon, rising recruited from the warm bath, and his limbs being well
rubbed with ointments, joined the party at supper in health and spirits.
It consisted of the Master, Leontium, Metrodorus, and two other
scholars, whose persons were new to him. There was something in the
gentle manners of one, not unmixed with a little awkwardness, the grave
repose of his features, the abstract thought that lined his forehead,
and fixed his mild eye, that led him to guess it was Polyœnus. The
other, whose gait had the dignity of manhood, and the polish of art;
whose face, without being handsome, had that beauty which refined
sentiment and a well stored mind always throw more or less into the
features; whose whole appearance showed at once the fine scholar and the
amiable man, fixed instantly Theon’s attention and curiosity. All
received the youth with congratulations, and Metrodorus, as he held him
in his embrace, jokingly upbraided him as a greedy and barbarous
invader, who was carrying off, in his single person, the whole love and
honor of the Garden. “But yet,” he added, “have a care; for I doubt you
have secured the envy also.”
“I believe it,” said Theon. “At least I know I should envy you, or any
of your fraternity, who had risked his life, aye, or lost it, in the
service of your Master, or any your Master loved.”
“Well said, my dear youth,” said the stranger, taking his hand; “and
when you have seen more of the nymph you so gallantly rescued, you will
perhaps think the man a no less object of envy, who should risk his life
for her, or any she loved.”
They moved to the table, when Leontium whispered Theon, “Hermachus of
Mytelene, the bosom friend of Epicurus.”
“I thank you,” replied Theon, “you have well read my curiosity.”
The party were about to place themselves, when a sound in the passage
turned all eyes to the door. “Yes, nurse, you may just peaceably let me
take my own way. Go, go, I am quite well, quite warm, and quite active.
I tell you, you have rubbed my skin off—would you rub away my flesh
too?” And in came, with the light foot of a nymph of Dian, the young
Hedeia. A white garment, carelessly adjusted, fell, with inimitable
grace, over her airy form; in equal negligence, her long hair, still
moist from the recent waves, and dishevelled by the anxious rubbing of
her careful attendant, hung down her shoulders to her zone. Her face,
though pale from late alarm and fatigue, beaming with life and joy. Her
full dark eyes sparkling with intelligence, and her lips, though their
coral was slightly faded, lovely with smiles. In one hand she held a
goblet, in the other a chaplet of myrtle. “Which is my hero?” she asked,
in a voice more sweet than the evening zephyr, as she looked round the
board. “Am I right?” approaching Theon. The youth, as he gazed on the
lovely face, forgot to answer. “Nay, is it a statue?” leaning forward,
and gazing in her turn, as if in curious inspection.
“No, a slave,” said Theon, half smiling, half blushing, as he stooped
his knee, while she placed the garland on his head.
“I come to pledge you,” she said, putting the cup to her lips, “and to
bid you pledge me,” presenting it with bewitching grace to the youth. He
took it in speechless ecstasy from her taper fingers, and turning that
side to his mouth which had received the touch of her’s, quaffed off at
once the draught of wine and love.
“Beware,” said a voice in his ear; “it is the cup of Circe.” He turned,
Polyœnus stood behind him; but when he saw his motionless features, he
could hardly believe the whisper had been uttered by him.
“I know,” continued the fair one, pointing to the table, “there is but
cold beverage here for a drowned man. My wise father may know to give
comfort to the mind, but come to my good nurse, when you want the
comfort of the body. She is the most skilful compounder of elixirs,
philters, and every palatable medicine that you might haply find in all
Greece, all Asia, aye, or all the earth. And now make way,” putting back
the surrounding company, and leading Theon by the arm to the upper end
of the table. “Behold the king of the feast.”
“That is, if you are the queen,” said the intoxicated youth.
“Oh! certainly,” placing herself by his side, “I never refuse
consequence, whenever I can get it.”
“Wherever you can take it, you mean,” said the Master laughing.
“And is not that every where?” said Hermachus, bowing to the fair girl.
“Yes, I believe it is. A pretty face, my friends, may presume much; a
willful nature may carry all things. I have both to perfection; have I
not?”
“Praise to Venus, and the Graces!” said Leontium; “our sister has
brought a heart as gay from the college of Pythagoras, as she took into
it.”
“To be sure; and did you expect otherwise? Psha! you philosophers know
nothing of human nature. I could have told you before this last
experiment, that humor lies in contrast, and that a wag will find more
subject in a synod of grave sages than a crew of laughing wits. You must
know,” turning to Theon, “I have been on a visit to a wise man, a _very_
wise man, who has followed from his youth up the whim, and all very wise
men have whims, of restoring the neglected school of Pythagoras to its
pristine greatness. Accordingly, he has collected and brought up some
dozen submissive youths to his full satisfaction; for not one of them
dare know his right hand from his left, but on his master’s authority,
doubly backed by that of the great founder. They have, in short, no
purse of their own, no time of their own, no tongue of their own, no
will of their own, and no thought of their own. You cannot conceive a
more perfect community. One more virtuously insipid, more scientifically
absurd, or more wisely ignorant.”
“Fie, fie, you giddy jade,” said the Master, smiling, while he tried to
frown.
“Giddy, not at all. I am delivering grave matter of fact story.”
“And we are all ear,” said Hermachus, “so pray let us have the whole of
it.”
“The whole? nay, you have it already. An abode of the blessed; a house
with twelve bodies in it, and one brain to serve them all.”
“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.”
Footnote 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.
“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.
“Never mind him,” whispered Hedeia, in the Corinthian’s ear,—“he is not
the grave man that a bright pair of eyes cannot make a fool of. This is
very odd,” she continued, looking round the board. “Here am I, the
stranger, and one too half drowned, charged with the entertaining of
this whole learned society.”
“Nay, my girl,” said the Master, “thou hadst need to be whole drowned,
ere your friends might secure the happiness of being listened to.”
“Indeed, I believe it’s true; and considering that the greatest pleasure
of life is the being listened to, I wonder how any one was found to pick
me out of the water. The Corinthian, to be sure, did not know what he
saved; but that the Master should wet his tunic in my service, is a very
unaccountable circumstance. Is there any reason for it in philosophy?”
“I am afraid none.”
“Or in mathematics?” turning to Polyœnus. “Now, just see there a proof
of my argument. Can any man look more like wisdom, or less like
happiness? This comes of diagrams and ethics. My young Corinthian, take
warning.”
“I wish we could fix you to a diagram,” said Leontium.
“The Graces forfend! and why should you wish it? Think you it would make
me wiser? Let Polyœnus be judge, if I am not wiser than he. I admire the
different prescriptions that are given by different doctors. The wife of
the good Pythagorean recommended me a distaff.”
“Well,” said Hermachus, “that might do equally.”
“Pray, why don’t you take one yourself?”
“I, you see, am busy with philosophy.”
“And so am I, with laughing at it. Ah! my sage brother, every man thinks
_that_ perfection, that he is himself—_that_ the only knowledge that he
possesses—and _that_ the only pleasure that he pursues. Trust me, there
are as many ways of living as there are men, and one is no more fit to
lead another, than a bird to lead a fish, or a fish a quadruped.”
“You would make a strange world, were you the queen of it,” said
Hermachus, laughing.
“Just as strange, and no stranger than it is at present. For why? I
should take it as I found it, and leave it as I found it. ’Tis you
philosophers, who would rub and twist, and plague and doctor it, and
fret your souls out, to bring all its heterogeneous parts, fools, wits,
knaves, simpletons, grave, gay, light, heavy, long faced and short
faced, black, white, brown, straight and crooked, tall, short, thin and
fat, to fit together, and patient reflect each other, like the acorns of
an oak, or the modest wives and helpless daughters of the good citizens
of Athens; ’tis you, I say, who would make a strange world, were you
kings of it—you would shorten and lengthen, clip, pull, and carve men’s
minds to fit your systems, as the tyrant did men’s bodies to fit his
bed.”
“I grant there’s some truth, my girl, in thy nonsense,” said the Master.
“And I grant that there is not a philosopher in Athens, who would have
granted as much, save thyself. You will find, my young hero,” turning to
Theon, “that my father philosophises more sense, that is, less
absurdity, than any man since the seven sages, nay! even than the seven
sages philosophized themselves. He only lacks to be a perfectly wise
man——”
“To burn,” said the Master, “his books of philosophy, and to sing a tune
to thy lyre.”
“No, it shall do to let me sing a tune to it myself.” She bounded from
the couch and the room, and returned in a moment, with the instrument in
her hand. “Fear not,” she said, nodding to the sage, as she lightly
swept the chords, “I shall not woo my own lover, but your mistress.”
“Come, Goddess! come! not in thy power,
With gait and garb austere,
And threatening brow severe,
Like stern Olympus in the judgment hour;
But come with looks and heart assuring,
Come with smiling eyes alluring,
Moving soft to Lydian measures,
Girt with graces, loves, and pleasures,
Bound with Basilea’s zone.
Come, Virtue! come! in joyous tone
We bid thee welcome to our hearth,
For well we know, that thou alone
Canst give the purest bliss of earth.”
“No thanks, no thanks. I shall take my own reward,” and stealing behind
Epicurus, she threw her white arms round his neck, and laid her cheek on
his lips. Then rising, “Good dreams be with you!” and waving round her
hand, and throwing a smile on Theon, vanished in an instant. The youth
saw and heard no more, but sat as in a dream, until the party divided.
“Have a care,” whispered the Master, as he followed him into the
vestibule. “Cupid is a knavish god, he can pierce the hearts of others,
and hold a shield before his own.”