Keith observed: 

“Petronius, I remember, speaks of the North wind being the mistress of the Tyrrhenian.  He would not use such language nowadays, unless alluding to its violence rather than its prevalence.  Once I thought of translating Petronius.  But I discovered certain passages in the book which are almost improper.  I don’t think the public ought to be put into possession of such stuff.  I am rather sorry; I like Petronius—­the poetical fragments, I mean; they make me regret that I was not born under the Roman Empire.  People are leaving,” he added.  “I have said good-bye to about fifty.  I shall be able to get a drink soon.”

“So you were born out of time and out of place, like many of us,” laughed the Bishop.

Count Caloveglia said: 

“It is an academic problem, and therefore a problem which does not exist for me, and therefore a problem dear to your own metaphysical heart, to enquire whether a man is ever born at an inopportune moment.  We use the phrase.  If we took thought we would discard it.  For what is the truth of the matter?  The truth is that a man, of whom we say this, is born at exactly the right moment; that those with whose customs and aspirations he seems to be in discord have urgent need of him at that particular time.  No great man is ever born too soon or too late.  When we say that the time is not ripe for this or that celebrity, we confess by implication that this very man, and no other, is required.  Was Giordano Bruno, or Edgar Poe, born out of time?  Surely no generation needed them more imperiously than their own.  Only fools are born out of time.  And yet—­no; not even they.  For where should we be without them?”

He smiles suavely, as though some pleasant thought was passing through his mind.

“At any rate a good many people die too soon or too late,” said Mr. Edgar Marten who, after doing full justice to the food and drinks, had suddenly appeared on the scene.  “Often too late,” he added.

Keith, despite his professions of sanity and reason, had an inexplicable, invincible horror of death; he quailed at the mere mention of the black phantom.  The subject being not at all to his taste, he promptly remarked: 

“The scholar Grosseteste was unquestionably born too soon.  And I know one man who is born too late.  Who?  Yourself, Count.  You were made for the Periclean epoch.”

“Thank you,” said that gentleman with a gracious wave of his hand.  “But forgive me for disagreeing with you.  Had I lived in that age, I should be lacking in reverence for what it accomplished.  I should be too near to its life; unable, as you say, to see the forest for the trees.  I should be like Thucydides, a most sensible person who, if I recollect aright, barely mentions Ictinus and the rest of them.  How came it about?  This admirable writer imagined they were building a temple for Greece; he lacked the interval of centuries which has allowed mankind to see their work in its