There was a time," said the devil,
as if
reciting
some passage from a book--"there was a time when occurred
an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of all its
officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people, and
these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power--at
that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon--at that time only I was in Rome, and I have
no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.
Poe - 5
--why it was I who told Aristotle that by sneezing, men expelled
superfluous ideas through the proboscis."
"Which is--hiccup!--undoubtedly the case," said the metaphysician, while
he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseux, and offered his
snuff-box to the fingers of his visiter.
"There was Plato, too," continued his Majesty, modestly declining the
snuff-box and the compliment it implied--"there was Plato, too, for
whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew Plato,
Bon-Bon?--ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at Athens, one
day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for an idea. I bade
him write, down that o nous estin aulos. He said that he would do so,
and went home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience
smote me for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening
back to Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher's chair as he was
inditing the 'aulos.'"
"Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down. So
the sentence now read 'o nous estin augos', and is, you perceive, the
fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics."
"Were you ever at Rome?" asked the restaurateur, as he finished his
second bottle of Mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of
Chambertin.
"But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once.
There was a time," said the devil,
as if
reciting
some passage from a book--"there was a time when occurred
an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of all its
officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people, and
these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power--at
that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon--at that time only I was in Rome, and I have
no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.
" (*2)
{*2} Ils ecrivaient sur la Philosophie (_Cicero, Lucretius,
Seneca_) mais c'etait la Philosophie Grecque.--_Condorcet_.
"What do you think of--what do you think of--hiccup!--Epicurus?"
"What do I think of whom?" said the devil, in astonishment, "you
cannot surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of
Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir?--I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher
who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by Diogenes
Laertes."
"That's a lie!" said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a little
into his head.
