Now don’t be foolish, Timon; cease overdoing the illtempered boor, hold out your hands, take your luck, and be a rich man again. Have Athens at your feet, and from your solitary eminence you can forget ingratitude.

I have no use for you; leave me in peace; my spade is riches enough for me; for the rest, I am perfectly happy if people will let me alone.

My dear sir—so unsociable? So stiff and stubborn a reply to Zeus? A misanthrope you may well be, after the way men have treated you; but with the Gods so thoughtful for you, you need not be a misotheist.

Very well, Hermes; I am extremely obliged to you and Zeus for your thoughtfulness—there; but I will not have Plutus.

Why, pray?

He brought me countless troubles long ago—put me in the power of flatterers, set designing persons on me, stirred up ill-feeling, corrupted me with indulgence, exposed me to envy, and wound up with treacherously deserting me at a moment’s notice. Then the excellent Poverty gave mea drilling in manly labour, conversed with me in all frankness and sincerity, rewarded my exertions with a sufficiency, and taught me to despise superfluities; all hopes of a livelihood were to depend on myself, and I was to know my true “wealth, unassailable by parasites’ flattery or informers’ threats, hasty legislatures or decree-mongering legislators, and which even the tyrant’s machinations cannot touch.

So, toil-hardened, working with a will at this bit of ground, my eyes rid of city offences, I get bread enough and to spare out of my spade. Go your ways, then, Hermes, and take Plutus back to Zeus. I am quite content to let every man of them go hang.

Oh, that would be a pity; they are not all hangingripe. Don’t make a passionate child of yourself, but admit Plutus. Zeus’s gifts are too good to be thrown away.

Will you condescend to argue with me, Timon? or does my voice provoke you?

Oh, talk away; but be brief; no rascally lawyer’s ‘opening the case.’ I can put up with a few words from you, for Hermes’ sake.