Epicurean's head, so much the better."

"Plotinus," said Hermon, the chief of the Epicureans, who had meanwhile
entered the apartment, "let this hypocrite have what he wants, and send him
away. I and my followers are perfectly willing to remove at once into the
inferior apartments, and leave ours for his occupation with all their
furniture, and the reversion of our bill of fare. Thou should'st know that
the imputations of the vulgar against our sect are the grossest calumnies.
The Epicurean places happiness in tranquil enjoyment, not in luxury or
sensual pleasures. There is not a thing I possess which I am not perfectly
willing to resign, except the society of my female disciple."

"Thy female disciple!" exclaimed the horrified Plotinus. "Thou art worse
than the Stoic!"

"Plotinus," said the Epicurean, "consider well ere, as is the manner of
Platonists, thou committest thyself to a proposition of a transparently
foolish nature. Thou desirest to gather all sorts of philosophers around
thee, but to what end, if they are restrained from manifesting their
characteristic tenets? Thou mightest as well seek to illustrate the habits
of animals by establishing a menagerie in which panthers should eat grass,
and antelopes be dieted on rabbits. An Epicurean without his female
companion, unless by his own choice, is no more an Epicurean than a Cynic
is a Cynic without his rags and his impudence. Wilt thou take from me my
Pannychis, an object pleasing to the eye, and leave yonder fellow his
tatters and his vermin?"

The apartment had gradually filled with philosophers, and Hermon was
pointing to a follower of Diogenes whose robe so fully bespoke his
obedience to his master's precepts that his skin seemed almost clean in