11
What was it? Don’t be shy, unless it’s completely forbidden to tell it. We’ve been initiated, as you know, and learnt to hold our tongues.
11
I’m ashamed to tell you. You will think it such a childish idea.
11
Nothing to do with love, is it? You certainly won’t be telling it to the unenlightened! We too have been initiated, under a torch which was blazing!
11
Nothing of that kind, my dear fellow. It was just a dream of wealth—what everybody calls “empty bliss and you caught me at the height of my fortune and luxury.
11
Well, that’s very simple. Share your luck, as they say; bring your wealth and pool it.
12
His friends should enjoy their part of Adimantus’s luxury.
12
I was separated from you as soon as we were on board, Lycinus, after bringing you there safely. I was measuring the width of the anchors when you went off somewhere.
13
All the same I looked at everything and then asked one of the sailors what income the ship brought in to its owner in an average year. “A minimum of twelve Attic talents,” he replied. Then I went back on shore and mused on what a happy life I should have had if of a sudden some god had made the ship mine: I would have helped my friends, and sailed in her myself some-times, and sometimes sent my servants. Then with some of the twelve talents I had already built myself a house in a good spot just above the Painted Arcade, In Athens. giving up the family house by the Ilissus; and I was buying servants and clothes and carriages and horses. Just now I was at sea, the envy of the passengers and the terror of the crew; they thought me almost a king. I was still settling her affairs and gazing at the harbour in the distance when you turned up, Lycinus. You sank my wealth and capsized my bark just when she was sailing well before the fair wind of my wish.
