9
First, I will take you in hand and strip you of your luxury, locking you up with poverty and clothing you in a threadbare cloak. Next, I will drive you to travail and toil, with the ground for your bed, water for your drink, and for your food whatever comes along. As for your money, if you have any, you will carry it down to the sea and throw it in, if you will be guided by me, and you will have no care for wife or child or fatherland; everything of that sort will seem trumpery to you. You will leave your paternal house, and take up your dwelling in a tomb, or in a deserted tower, or even in a tub. Let your wallet be full of pease and bescribbled books, and in this plight you will declare yourself happier than the great king. If any one should flog you or stretch you on the rack you will feel no pain.
9
What do you mean by that feeling no pain when one is flogged? I have not got the covering of a turtle or a lobster on my shoulders!
9
You will admire that little saying of Euripides, with a word or two altered.
9
What one?
9
Your heart will suffer, but your tongue will feel no pain.
10
But the most necessary qualities are these: you must be reckless and daring, and abuse all alike, kings and subjects. By this means you will be noticed and thought manly. Let your speech be uncouth, your voice discordant and strongly resembling a dog's. Wear a strenuous face, and choose a gait in keeping with 5 it; and let all your ways be wild and boorish. But let shame and reason and moderation stand afar off, and strip your blushes from your cheeks altogether. Haunt the most frequented spots, and even in those let your desire be for unshared solitude; and attach yourself to neither friend nor stranger, for that would upset your empire. And at last, if you see fit, eat a raw polyp or a jelly-fish, and die. Such is the happiness we procure for you.
11
Be off with you! Your ways are foul and unnatural.
