The Death of Peregrine (41-45)

Only think what work we shall have with him hereafter! Significant bees will settle on the spot; grasshoppers beyond calculation will chirrup; crows will perch there, as over Hesiod’s grave,—and all the rest of it. As for statues, several, I know, are to be put up at once, by Elis and other places, to which, I understand, he had sent letters. These letters, they say, were dispatched to almost all cities of any importance: they contain certain exhortations and schemes of reform, as it were a legacy. Certain of his followers were specially appointed by him for this service: Couriers to the Grave and Grand Deputies of the Shades were to be their titles.

Such was the end of this misguided man; one who, to give his character in a word, never to his last day suffered his gaze to rest on Truth; whose words, whose actions had but one aim,—notoriety and vulgar applause. 'Twas the love of applause that drove him to the pyre, where applause could no longer reach his ears, nor gratify his vanity. '.

One anecdote, and I have done; it will keep you in amusement for some time to come. I told you long ago, on my return from Syria, how I had come on the same ship with him from Troas, and what airs he put on during the voyage, and about the handsome youth whom he converted to Cynicism, by way of having an Alcibiades all of his own, and how he woke up one night in mid-ocean to find a storm breaking on us, and a heavy sea rolling, and how the superb philosopher, for whom Death had no terrors, was found wailing among the women. All that you know.

But a short time before his death, about a week or so, he had a little too much for dinner, I suppose, and was taken ill in the night, and had a sharp attack of fever. Alcxander was the physician called in to attend him, and it was from him I got the story. He said he found Proteus rolling on

So much for Alexander. I myself, not so long ago, saw Proteus with some irritant rubbed on his eyes to purge them of theum, Evidently we are to infer that there is no admission for blear eyes in the kingdom of Aeacus. ”T'was as if a man on — the way to be crucified were to concern himself about a sprained finger, Think if Democritus had seen all this! How would he have taken it? The laughing philosopher might have done justice to Proteus. I doubt, indeed, whether he ever had such a good excuse for his mirth.

Be that as it may, you, my friend, shall have your laugh; especially when you hear Proteus’s name mentioned with admiration.