sinner that you are!--any accusation will serve. You are gagged and
turned out neck and crop into the darkness. Away you go, helpless and
destitute, with gout for the cheering companion of your old age. Whatever
you once knew, you have unlearnt in all these years: on the other hand,
you have developed a paunch like a balloon; a monster insatiable,
inexorable, which has acquired a habit of asking for more, and likes not
at all the unlearning process. It is not to be supposed that any one else
will give you employment, at your age; you are like an old horse, whose
very hide has deteriorated in value. Not to mention that the worst
interpretation will be put upon your late dismissal; you will be credited
with adultery, or poisoning, or something of that kind. Your accuser, you
see, is convincing even in silence; whereas you--you are a loose-
principled, unscrupulous _Greek_. That is the character we Greeks
bear; and it serves us right; I see excellent grounds for the opinion
they have of us. Greek after Greek who enters their service sets up (in
default of any other practical knowledge) for wizard or poisoner, and
deals in love-charms and evil spells; and these are they who talk of
culture, who wear grey beards and philosophic cloaks! When these, who are
accounted the best of us, stand thus exposed, when men observe their
interested servility, their gross flatteries at table and elsewhere, it
is not to be wondered at that we have all fallen under suspicion. Those
whom they have cast off, they hate, and seek to make an end of them
altogether; arguing, naturally enough, that men who know their secrets,
and have seen them in all their nakedness, may divulge many a foible
which will not bear the light; and the thought is torment to them. The
fact is, that these great men are for all the world like handsomely bound
books. Outside are the gilt edges and the purple cover: and within? a
Thyestes feasts upon his own children; an Oedipus commits incest with his
mother; a Tereus woos two sisters at once. Such are these human books:
their brilliancy attracts all eyes, but between the purple covers lurks