house have been choked up with riotous
feeders at his master's cost, when the floors have wept with drunken
spilling of wine, and every apartment has blazed with lights and
resounded with music and feasting, often had he retired by himself to
some solitary spot, and wept faster than the wine ran from the wasteful
casks within, to see the mad bounty of his lord, and to think, when the
means were gone which brought him praises from all sorts of people, how
quickly the breath would be gone of which the praise was made; praises
won in feasting would be lost in feasting, and at one cloud of
winter-showers these flies would disappear.

But now the time was come that Timon could shut his ears no longer to
the representations of this faithful steward. Money must be had; and
when he ordered Flavius to sell some of his land for that purpose,
Flavius informed him, what he had in vain endeavoured at several times
before to make him listen to, that most of his land was already sold or
forfeited, and that all he possessed at present was not enough to pay
the one half of what he owed. Struck with wonder at this presentation,
Timon hastily replied: 'My lands extend from Athens to Lacedaemon.' 'O
my good lord,' said Flavius, 'the world is but a world, and has bounds;
were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly were it gone!'

Timon consoled himself that no villanous bounty had yet come from him,
that if he had given his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed
to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends; and he made the
kind-hearted steward (who was weeping) to take comfort in the assurance
that his master could never lack means, while he had so many noble
friends; and this infatuated lord persuaded himself that he had nothing
to do but to send and borrow, to use every man's fortune (that had ever
tasted his bounty) in this extremity, as freely as his own. Then with a
cheerful look, as if confident of the trial, he severally despatched
messengers to lord Lucius, to lords Lucullus and Sempronius, men upon
whom he had lavished his gifts in past times without measure or
moderation; and to Ventidius, whom he had lately released out of prison
by paying his debts, and who, by the death of his father, was now come
into the possession of an ample fortune, and well enabled to requite
Timon's courtesy: to request of Ventidius the return of those five
talents which he had paid for him, and of each of those noble lords the
loan of