such a brute as I had shown myself to be; and I took the book from his reluctant fingers.
"Take good care of it," said he.
"Make your mind easy, it shall lie under my pillow," and with this reassuring reply I let him depart.
Plutarch of Cheronaeus was a stout little volume, as broad as it was long, of about thirteen hundred closely printed pages; the words all heaped one upon another, like corn in a bin. "There is three years' provender there, for three donkeys," thought I. At the head of each chapter were round medallion portraits of the illustrious subjects of the memoirs, surrounded by wreaths of laurel; these diverted me extremely; they only lacked a bunch of parsley in their mouths to be complete.
"What are all these Greeks and Romans to me? " I thought. "We are living, and they are long since dead, and can teach me nothing but what I knew before; that man is a wicked creature, but agreeable enough; that age improves wine, and spoils women; that in all countries, the big fishes swallow the little ones, and the weak jeer at their oppressors. — These Romans are terrible fellows to make long speeches; and I am not by any means opposed to eloquence; only I want to warn these gentlemen that turn and turn about is fair play."
