13
Your vanity is infinite, if you like. Stop that laughing, you rascal.—
14
And you, my poor fellow, what are you crying for? I must see what I can make of you.
14
I am thinking, friend, upon human affairs; and well may I weep and lament, for the doom of all is sealed. Hence my compassion and my sorrow. For the present, I think not of it; but the future!—the future is all bitterness. Conflagration and destruction of the world. I weep to think that nothing abides, All things are whirled together in confusion. Pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, great and small; up and down they go, the playthings of Time.
14
And what is Time?
14
A child; and plays at draughts and blindman’s-buff.
14
And men?
14
Are mortal Gods.
14
And Gods?
14
Immortal men.
14
So! Conundrums, fellow? Nuts to crack? You are a very oracle for obscurity.
14
Your affairs do not interest me.
14
No one will be fool enough to bid for you at that rate.
14
Young and old, him that bids and him that bids not, a murrain seize you all!
14
A sad case. He will be melancholy mad before long. Neither of these is the creed for my money.
14
No one bids.
14
Next lot.
15
The Athenian there? Old Chatterbox?
15
By all means.
15
Come forward!—A good sensible creed this. Who buys Holiness?
15
Let me see. What are you good for?
15
I teach the art of love.
15
A likely bargain for me! I want a tutor for my young Adonis.
15
And could he have a better? The love I teach is of. the spirit, not of the flesh. Under my roof, be sure, a boy will come to no harm.
15
Very unconvincing that. A teacher of the art of love, and never meddle with anything but the spirit? Never use the opportunities your office gives you?
16
Now by Dog and Plane-tree, it is as I say!
16
Heracles! What strange Gods are these?
16
Why, the Dog is a God, I suppose? Is not Anubis made much of in Egypt? Is there not a Dog-star in Heaven, and a Cerberus in the lower world?
17
Quite so. My mistake. Now what is your manner of life?
17
I live in a city of my own building; I make my own laws, and have a novel constitution of my own.
