Yet you’re easy to his hand, whoever cringes; Every fool you gape upon, Every speech your ear hath won, While your wits move off and on Their hinges. _Demus_ (_surlily_). Hinges in their teeth, who deem That Demus is an easy fool; If he yawn, and if he dream, If he tipple, ’tis by rule. ’Tis his way to keep in pay a knave to ease him; Him he keeps for guide and gull, But when once the sponge is full, To himself the knave he’ll pull, And squeeze him.[109] _Mitchell_, p. 250, 262. They return laden with all sorts of eatables. “The sausage–seller has the advantage of his rival for some time in his presents, till Cleon awakens his fears by talking of a dish of hare, which he has exclusively to present. His rival, disconcerted at first, has recourse to a stratagem. ‘Some ambassadors come this way, _and their purses seem well filled_.’ ‘Where are they?’ exclaims Cleon eagerly, and turns about. The hare–flesh was immediately in the hands of his rival, who presents the boasted dainty in his own name to Demus, and casts the old affair of Pylos in the disappointed Cleon’s teeth.[110] “While the sausage–seller piously refers the suggestion of this little theft to Minerva, and modestly takes the execution only to himself, Cleon resents the surprise very warmly. ‘I had all the danger of catching the hare,’ says he. ‘I had all the trouble of dressing it,’ says his rival. ‘Fools,’ says Demus, ‘I care not who caught it, nor who dressed it; all I regard is the hand which serves it up to table.’ The sausage–seller proposes a new test of affection. ‘Let our chests be searched; it will then be proved who is the better man towards Demus and his stomach.’ This is accordingly done. That of the new candidate for power is found empty. ‘He had given his dear little grandfather every thing;’ and the person so benefited signifies his approbation. ‘This chest is well disposed towards Demus.’ In Cleon’s is found abundance of all good things; and a tempting cheese–cake particularly excites Demus’s surprise. ‘The rogue,’ says this representative of the sovereign multitude, ‘to conceal such a prodigious cheese–cake as this, and to cut me off with a mere morsel of it.’ Cleon in vain pleads, that he stole it for the good of his country. He is ordered to lay down his chaplet,[111] and invest his antagonist with it. Nay, says he, still struggling for the retention of office.” _Cleon._ I have an oracle: it came from Phœbus, And tells to whom Fate wills I yield the mastery. _Saus._ Declare the name; my life upon’t, the god Refers to me. _Cleon._ Presumptuous! you! low scoundrel! To the proof;—where were you schooled, and who the teacher That first imbued your infant mind with knowledge?