"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.
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