The Death of Peregrine (26-30)

‘Some say that he is beginning to think better of it; that he reports certain dreams, to the effect that Zeus will not suffer the holy place to be profaned. Let him be easy on that score. I dare swear that not a God of them will have any objection to a rogue’s dying a rogue’s death. To be sure, he won’t easily get out of it now. His Cynic friends egg him on and thrust him pyre-wards; they keep his ambition aglow; there shall be no flinching, if they can help it! If Proteus would take a couple of them with him in the fatal leap, it would be the first good action he has ever performed.

'Not even “ Proteus ” will serve now, they were saying he has changed his name to Phoenix; that Indian bird being credited with bringing a prolonged existence to an end upon apyre. He tells strange tales too, and quotes

And upon my word it is as likely as not that among the simple vulgar will be found some to declare that Proteus has cured them of the ague, and that in the darkness they have met with the “ guardian spirit of the night.” And as the ancient Proteus, the son of Zeus, the great original, had the gift of prophecy, I suppose these precious disciples of the modern one will be for getting up an oracle and a shrine upon the scene of cremation. Mark my words: we shall find we have got Protean priests of the scourge; priests of the branding-iron; priests of some strange thing or other; or —who knows?—nocturnal rites in his honour, with a torchlight procession about the pyre.