It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon; ·107· and the reply of his Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.
“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon—eyes! did you say?—oh!—ah!—I perceive! The ridiculous prints, eh, which are in circulation, have given you a false idea of my personal appearance? Eyes!—true. Eyes, Pierre Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place—that, you would say, is the head?—right—the head of a worm. To you likewise these optics are indispensable—yet I will convince you that my vision is more penetrating than your own. There is a cat, I see, in the corner—a pretty cat—look at her—observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you behold the thoughts—the thoughts, I say—the ideas—the reflections—which are being engendered in her pericranium? There it is, now—you do not! She is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of my profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance, liable at any time to be put out by a toasting iron [C,E: toasting-iron] or a pitchfork. To you, I allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use them well;—my vision is the soul.”
Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.
“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his Majesty, tapping our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass after a thorough compliance with his visiter’s injunction. “A clever book that of yours, upon my honor. It’s a work after my own heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth in ·108· all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral truth I am alluding?”
“Cannot say that I——”
“Indeed!—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 ο νους εστιν. [C,E: ο νους εστιν αυλος.] [E: ‘ο νους εστιν αυλος.’] 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 ‘αυλος.’ Giving the lamma a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down. So the sentence now reads ‘ο νους εστιν αυγος,’ and is, you perceive, the fundamental doctrine 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 ·109· 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)
“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.
“Very well!—very well, sir!—very well, indeed, sir!” said his Majesty, apparently much flattered.
“That’s a lie!” repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically, “that’s a—hiccup!—a lie!”
“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the devil, pacifically; and Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at an argument, thought it his duty to conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.
“As I was saying,” resumed the visiter, “as I was observing a little while ago, there are some very outré notions in that book of yours, Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? Pray, sir, what is the soul?”
“The—hiccup!—soul,” replied the metaphysician, referring to his MS., “is undoubtedly——”
“No, sir!”
“Indubitably——”
“No, sir!”
“Indisputably——”
“No, sir!”
·110· “Evidently——”
“No, sir!”
“Incontrovertibly——”
“No, sir!”
“Hiccup!——”
“No, sir!”
“And beyond all question, a——”
“No, sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here, the philosopher, looking daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third bottle of Chambertin.)
“Then—hiccup!—pray, sir—what—what is it?”
“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” replied his Majesty, musingly. “I have tasted—that is to say, I have known some very bad souls, and some too—pretty good ones.” Here he smacked his lips, and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in his pocket, was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.
He continued:
“There was the soul of Cratinus—passable: Aristophanes—racy: Plato—exquisite—not your Plato, but Plato the comic poet: your Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus—faugh! Then let me see! there were Nævius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius. Then there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus Flaccus,—dear Quinty! as I called him when he sung a seculare for my amusement, while I toasted him, in pure good humor, on a fork. But they want flavor these Romans.