phitheatre?" groaned Plotinus.

"They _say_ it is for lectures," replied Porphyry; "I trust there is no
truth in the rumour that the head of the Stoics is three parts owner of a
lion of singular ferocity."

"I must see to this as soon as I can get about," said Plotinus, turning to
the accounts. "What's this? To couch and litter for head of Peripatetic
school!"

"Who is so enormously fat," explained Porphyry, "that these conveniences
are really indispensable to him. The Peripatetic school is positively at a
standstill."

"And no great matter," said Plotinus; "its master Aristotle was at best a
rationalist, without perception of the supersensual. What's this? To
Maximus, for the invocation of demons."

"That," said Porphyry, "is our own Platonic dirty linen, and I heartily
wish we were washing it elsewhere. Thou must know, dear master, that during
thy trance the theurgic movement has attained a singular development, and
that thou art regarded with disdain by thy younger disciples as one wholly
behind the age, unacquainted with the higher magic, and who can produce no
other outward and visible token of the Divine favour than the occasional
companionship of a serpent."

"I would not assert that theurgy may not be lawfully undertaken," replied
Plotinus, "provided that the adept shall have purified himself by a fast of
forty months."

"It may be from neglect of this precaution," said Porphyry, "that our
Maximus finds it so much easier to evoke the shades of Commodus and
Caracalla than those of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius; and that these good
spirits, when they do come, have no more recondite information to convey
than that virtue differs from vice, and that one's grandmother is a fitting
object of reverence."

"I fear this must expose Platonic truth to the derision of Epicurean
scoffers," remarked Plotinus.

"O master, speak not of Epicureans, still less of Stoics! Wait till thou
hast regained thy full strength, and then take counsel of some oracle."

"What meanest thou?" exclaimed Plotinus, "I insist upon knowing."

Porphyry was saved from replying by the hasty entrance of a bustling portly
personage of loud voice and imperious manner, in whom Plotinus recognised
Theocles, the chief of the Stoics.

"I rejoice, Plotinus," he began, "that thou hast at length emerged from
that condition of torpor, so unworthy of a philosopher, which I might well
designate as charlatanism were I not so firmly determined to speak