drink; tasting slowly, so as to prolong the desired
debauch, and attaining, though in no unlawful manner, the forbidden
measure of satiety.

Thus his stubborn and frantic intemperance risked his life, all for
luxury; and, undeterred even by the threats of the king, he fortified
his rash appetite to despise every peril. A second time he was summoned
by the king on the charge of disobeying his regulation. Yet he did not
even theft cease to defend his act, but maintained that he had in no
wise contravened the royal decree, and that the temperance prescribed
by the ordinance had been in no way violated by that which allured
him; especially as the thrift ordered in the law of plain living was so
described, that it was apparently forbidden to drink liquor, but not to
eat it. Then the king called heaven to witness, and swore by the general
good, that if he ventured on any such thing hereafter he would punish
him with death. But the man thought that death was not so bad as
temperance, and that it was easier to quit life than luxury; and
he again boiled the grain in water, and then fermented the liquor;
whereupon, despairing of any further plea to excuse his appetite, he
openly indulged in drink, and turned to his cups again unabashed. Giving
up cunning for effrontery, he chose rather to await the punishment of
the king than to turn sober. Therefore, when the king asked him why he
had so often made free to use the forbidden thing, he said:

"O king, this craving is begotten, not so much of my thirst, as of my
goodwill towards thee! For I remembered that the funeral rites of a king
must be paid with a drinking-bout. Therefore, led by good judgment more
than the desire to swill, I have, by mixing the forbidden liquid, taken
care that the feast whereat thy obsequies are performed should not, by
reason of the scarcity of corn, lack the due and customary drinking. Now
I do not doubt that thou wilt perish of famine before the rest, and
be the first to need a tomb; for thou hast passed this strange law of
thrift in fear that thou wilt be thyself the first to lack food. Thou
art thinking for thyself, and not for others, when thou bringest thyself
to start such strange miserly ways."

This witty quibbling turned the anger of the king into shame; and when
he saw that his ordinance for the general good came home in mockery to
himself, he thought no more of the public profit, but revoked the edict,
relaxing his purpose sooner than anger h