em), it can only be by such as are very far from perfection, and who
indulge us in the commission of innumerable faults and follies, for
their own speculation or amusement.

_Timotheus._ There is only one such; and he is the devil.

_Lucian._ If he delights in our wickedness, which you believe, he must
be incomparably the happiest of beings, which you do not believe. No
god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his armchair with less energetic
exertion or discomposure.

_Timotheus._ We lead holier and purer lives than such ignorant mortals
as are not living under Grace.

_Lucian._ I also live under Grace, O Timotheus! and I venerate her for
the pleasures I have received at her hands. I do not believe she has
quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unattractive to her, and if
the trace of her fingers is lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still
I sometimes am told it is discernible even on the latest and coldest
of my writings.

_Timotheus._ You are wilful in misapprehension. The Grace of which I
speak is adverse to pleasure and impurity.

_Lucian._ Rightly do you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed
soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never
believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if
you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you
have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found
together, on mind as on matter, than hardness and lubricity.

Believe me, Cousin Timotheus, when we come to eighty years of age we
are all Essenes. In our kingdom of heaven there is no marrying or
giving in marriage; and austerity in ourselves, when Nature holds over
us the sharp instrument with which Jupiter operated on Saturn, makes
us austere to others. But how happens it that you, both old and young,
break every bond which connected you anciently with the Essenes? Not
only do you marry (a height of wisdom to which I never have attained,
although in others I commend it), but you never share your substance
with the poorest of your community, as they did, nor live simply and
frugally, nor purchase nor employ slaves, nor refuse rank and offices
in the State, nor abstain from litigation, nor abominate and execrate
the wounds and cruelties of war. The Essenes did all this, and greatly
more, if Josephus and Philo, whose political and religious tenets are
opposite to theirs, are credible and trustworthy.

_Timotheus._ Doubtless you would also wish us to r