"Bath! Amphitheatre!" gasped Plotinus.

"O dear master," remonstrated Porphyry, "thou didst not deem that
philosophers could be induced to settle in a spot devoid of these
necessaries? Not a single one would have stayed if I had not yielded to
their demands, which, as regarded the bath, involved the addition of
exedrae and of a sphaeristerium."

"And what can they want with an amphitheatre?" groaned Plotinus.

"They _say_ it is for lectures," replied Porphyry; "I trust there is no
truth in the rumour that the head of the Stoics is three parts owner of a
lion of singular ferocity."

"I must see to this as soon as I can get about," said Plotinus, turning to
the accounts. "What's this? To couch and litter for head of Peripatetic
school!"

"Who is so enormously fat," explained Porphyry, "that these conveniences
are really indispensable to him. The Peripatetic school is positively at a
standstill."

"And no great matter," said Plotinus; "its master Aristotle was at best a
rationalist, without perception of the supersensual. What's this? To
Maximus, for the invocation of demons."

"That," said Porphyry, "is our own Platonic dirty linen, and I heartily
wish we were washing it elsewhere. Thou must know, dear master, that during
thy trance the theurgic movement has attained a singular development, and
that thou art regarded with disdain by thy younger disciples as one wholly