“It is a sad age!” sighed Elizabeth.

“Well, all I’ve got to say is just this,” put in Xanthippe:  “You people who get up functions have brought this condition of affairs on yourselves.  You were not satisfied to go ahead and indulge your passion for lions in a moderate fashion.  Take the case of Demosthenes last winter, for instance.  His wife told me that he dined at home three times during the winter.  The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and everywhere, making after-dinner speeches.  The saving on his dinner bills didn’t pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected.  It was as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of his head, so that he couldn’t go out, the way he used to do in Athens when he was afraid he would be invited out and couldn’t scare up a decent excuse for refusing.”

“Did he do that?” cried Elizabeth, with a roar of laughter.

“So the cyclopaedias say.  It’s a good plan, too,” said Xanthippe.  “Though Socrates never had to do it.  When I got the notion Socrates was going out too much, I used to hide his dress clothes.  Then there was the case of Rubens.  He gave a Carbon Talk at the Sforza’s Thursday Night Club, merely to oblige Madame Sforza, and three weeks later discovered that she had sold his pictures to pay for her gown!  You people simply run it into the ground.  You kill the goose that when taken at the flood leads on to fortune.  It advertises you, does the lion no good, and he is expected to be satisfied with confectionery, material and theoretical.  If they are getting tired of candy and compliments, it’s because you have forced too much of it upon them.”

“They like it, just the same,” retorted Recamier.  “A genius likes nothing better than the sound of his own voice, when he feels that it is falling on aristocratic ears.  The social laurel rests pleasantly on many a noble brow.”

“True,” said Xanthippe.  “But when a man gets a pile of Christmas wreaths a mile high on his head, he begins to wonder what they will bring on the market.  An occasional wreath is very nice, but by the ton they are apt to weigh on his mind.  Up to a certain point notoriety is like a woman, and a man is apt to love it; but when it becomes exacting, demanding instead of permitting itself to be courted, it loses its charm.”

“That is Socratic in its wisdom,” smiled Portia.

“But Xanthippic in its origin,” returned Xanthippe.  “No man ever gave me my ideas.”

As Xanthippe spoke, Lucretia Borgia burst into the room.

“Hurry and save yourselves!” she cried.  “The boat has broken loose from her moorings, and is floating down the stream.  If we don’t hurry up and do something, we’ll drift out to sea!”

“What!” cried Cleopatra, dropping her cue in terror, and rushing for the stairs.  “I was certain I felt a slight motion.  You said it was the wash from one of Charon’s barges, Elizabeth.”