Flavius, his steward, looked with dismay at his reckless mode of life.
When Timon's house was full of noisy lords drinking and spilling costly
wine, Flavius would sit in a cellar and cry. He would say to himself,
"There are ten thousand candles burning in this house, and each of those
singers braying in the concert-room costs a poor man's yearly income a
night;" and he would remember a terrible thing said by Apemantus, one of
his master's friends, "O what a number of men eat Timon, and Timon sees
them not!"

Of course, Timon was much praised.

A jeweler who sold him a diamond pretended that it was not quite perfect
till Timon wore it. "You mend the jewel by wearing it," he said. Timon
gave the diamond to a lord called Sempronius, and the lord exclaimed,
"O, he's the very soul of bounty." "Timon is infinitely dear to me,"
said another lord, called Lucullus, to whom he gave a beautiful horse;
and other Athenians paid him compliments as sweet.

But when Apemantus had listened to some of them, he said, "I'm going to
knock out an honest Athenian's brains."

"You will die for that," said Timon.

"Then I shall die for doing nothing," said Apemantus. And now you know
what a joke was like four hundred years before Christ.

This Apernantus was a frank despiser of mankind, but a healthy one,
because he was not unhappy. In this mixed world anyone with a number
of acquaintances knows a person who talks bitterly of men, but does not
shun them, and boasts that he is never deceived by their fine speeches,
and is inwardly cheerful and proud. Apemantus was a man like that.

Timon, you will be surprised to hear, became much worse than Apemantus,
after the dawning of a day which we call Quarter Day.

Quarter Day is the day when bills pour in. The grocer, the butcher, and
the baker are all thinking of their debtors on that day, and the wise
man has saved enough money to be ready for them. But Timon had not; and
he did not only owe money for food. He owed it for jewels and horses and
furniture; and, worst of all, he owed it to money-lenders, who expected
him to pay twice as much as he had borrowed.

Quarter Day is a day when promises to pay are scorned, and on that day
Timon was asked for a large sum of money. "Sell some land," he said
to his steward. "You have no land," was the reply. "Nonsense! I had a
hundred, thousand acres," said Timon. "You could have spent the price of
the world if you had possessed it," said Flavius.

"Bor