As a matter of
fact, you used to say that they acted absurdly in that
they loved you to excess, yet did not dare to enjoy
‘you when they might, and instead of giving free
rein to their passion when it lay in their power to do
so, they kept watch and ward, looking fixedly at the
seal and the bolt; for they thought it enjoyment

 

enough, not that they were able to enjoy you
themselves, but that they were shutting out everyone else from a share in the enjoyment, like the dog
in the manger that neither ate the barley herself nor
permitted the hungry horse to eat it. Moreover,
you laughed them to scorn because they scrimped
and saved and, what is strangest of all, were jealous
of themselves, all unaware that a cursed valet or a
shackle-burnishing steward would slip in by stealth
and play havoc, leaving his luckless, unloved master
to sit up over his interests beside a dim, narrownecked lamp with a thirsty wick. Why, then, is it
not unjust in you, after having found fault with that
sort of thing in the past, to charge Timon with the
opposite now ?