“You have an appetite, I hope?” asked Adrian.

“I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk,” chirped Hippias.  “Yes.  I think I feel hungry now.”

“Charmed to hear it,” said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on his knees.  “How should you define Folly?” he checked the process to inquire.

“Hm!” Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when such questions were addressed to him.  “I think I should define it to be a slide.”

“Very good definition.  In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle.  You must present that to the Pilgrim.  And the monument of folly, what would that be?”

Hippias meditated anew.  “All the human race on one another’s shoulders.”  He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.

“Very good,” Adrian applauded, “or in default of that, some symbol of the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a chip.”

Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.

“This is the monument made portable—­eh?”

“Cake!” cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense disgust.  “You’re right of them that eat it.  If I—­if I don’t mistake,” he peered at it, “the noxious composition bedizened in that way is what they call wedding-cake.  It’s arrant poison!  Who is it you want to kill?  What are you carrying such stuff about for?”

Adrian rang the bell for a knife.  “To present you with your due and proper portion.  You will have friends and relatives, and can’t be saved from them, not even by miracle.  It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps, the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with the object probably” (he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to slice the cake) “of enabling those friends (these edifices require very delicate incision—­each particular currant and subtle condiment hangs to its neighbour—­a wedding-cake is evidently the most highly civilized of cakes, and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of civilization!)—­I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt (we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing some hours in purgatory.  This, as far as I can apportion it without weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!”

He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.

“Get away!” Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.  “I’ll have none of it, I tell you!  It’s death!  It’s fifty times worse than that beastly compound Christmas pudding!  What fool has been doing this, then?  Who dares send me cake?  Me!  It’s an insult.”