oves ungrateful! this Lucius now denied to
Timon a sum, which, in respect of what Timon had bestowed on him, was
less than charitable men afford to beggars.

Sempronius, and every one of these mercenary lords to whom Timon
applied in their turn, returned the same evasive answer or direct
denial; even Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich Ventidius, refused to
assist him with the loan of those five talents which Timon had not lent
but generously given him in his distress.

Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty as he had been courted and
resorted to in his riches. Now the same tongues which had been loudest
in his praises, extolling him as bountiful, liberal, and open handed,
were not ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly, that liberality
as profuseness, though it had shown itself folly in nothing so truly as
in the selection of such unworthy creatures as themselves for its
objects. Now was Timon's princely mansion forsaken, and become a
shunned and hated place, a place for men to pass by, not a place, as
formerly, where every passenger must stop and taste of his wine and
good cheer; now, instead of being thronged with feasting and tumultuous
guests, it was beset with impatient and clamorous creditors, usurers,
extortioners, fierce and intolerable in their demands, pleading bonds,
interest, mortgages; iron-hearted men that would take no denial nor
putting off, that Timon's house was now his jail, which he could not
pass, nor go in nor out for them; one demanding his due of fifty
talents, another bringing in a bill of five thousand crowns, which if
he would tell out his blood by drops, and pay them so, he had not
enough in his body to discharge, drop by drop.

In this desperate and irremediable state (as it seemed) of his affairs,
the eyes of all men were suddenly surprised at a new and incredible
lustre which this setting sun put forth. Once more lord Timon
proclaimed a feast, to which he invited his accustomed guests, lords,
ladies, all that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lord Lucius and
Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now
than these fawning wretches, when they found (as they thought) that
Lord Timon's poverty was all pretence, and had been only to make trial
of their loves, to think that they should not have seen through the
artifice at the time, and have had the cheap credit of obliging his
lordship? yet who more glad to find the fountain of that noble bounty,
whi