in the manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected this good servant, that he stood speechless, wrapt up in horror, and confounded.  And when he found utterance at last to his words, they were so choaked with tears, that Timon had much ado to know him again, or to make out who it was that had come (so contrary to the experience he had had of mankind) to offer him service in extremity.  And being in the form and shape of a man, he suspected him for a traitor, and his tears for false; but the good servant by so many tokens confirmed the truth of his fidelity, and made it clear that nothing but love and zealous duty to his once dear master had brought him there, that Timon was forced to confess that the world contained one honest man; yet, being in the shape and form of a man, he could not look upon his man’s face without abhorrence, or hear words uttered from his man’s lips without loathing; and this singly honest man was forced to depart, because he was a man, and because, with a heart more gentle and compassionate than is usual to man, he bore man’s detested form and outward feature.

But greater visitants than a poor steward were about to interrupt the savage quiet of Timon’s solitude.  For now the day was come when the ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they had done to the noble Timon.  For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild boar, was raging at the walls of their city, and with his hot siege threatened to lay fair Athens in the dust.  And now the memory of lord Timon’s former prowess and military conduct came fresh into their forgetful minds, for Timon had been their general in past times, and was a valiant and expert soldier, who alone of all the Athenians was deemed able to cope with a besieging army, such as then threatened them, or to drive back the furious approaches of Alcibiades.

A deputation of the senators was chosen in this emergency to wait upon Timon.  To him they come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in extremity, they had shewn but small regard; as if they presumed upon his gratitude whom they had disobliged, and had derived a claim to his courtesy from their own most discourteous and unpiteous treatment.

Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him with tears, to return and save that city, from which their ingratitude had so lately driven him; now they offer him riches, power, dignities, satisfaction for past injuries, and public honours and the public love; their persons, lives, and fortunes, to be at his disposal, if he will but come back and save them.  But Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer lord Timon, the lord of bounty, the flower of valour, their defence in war, their ornament in peace.  If Alcibiades killed his countrymen, Timon cared not.  If he sacked fair Athens, and slew her old men and her infants, Timon would rejoice.  So he told them; and that there was not a knife in the unruly camp which he did not prize above the reverendest throat in Athens.