So this man went on providing amusement for gods and men until he was twenty-five years of age. Sometimes he, unfortunately, was quite unable to laugh at himself. Then he wrote verses. At other times he laughed at himself very well--often in self-defence, because it made other men let him off easier--and then he would tear his verses up. On that last day he lay in bed in the morning and shivered. He had slept for a little while--he had seen to that before he went to bed--but he was wide awake now, and his head was burning, and his thoughts were of the kind that tighten the muscles of the body and are likely nowadays to lead on to padded rooms. For the day before he had been found out; one act of fatal cowardice on his part--such cowardice as no one could forgive--had cost a girl her life, and this girl was the sister of his own familiar friend. There was plenty of variety about his thoughts. Sometimes he felt like a murderer. Sometimes he heard the dead girl’s brother speaking awful things to him, contemptuous, heart-broken words. There was no hope of concealment, no pretty story that he could tell. It had all been seen and known. In his dreams that night he had been through the whole scene again, but his own part had been altered. In his dream he had been equal to the occasion--taken the plunge, rescued the girl, and been welcomed with praise and honour, and he had walked back through the streets of Athens feeling more happy than a god. Suddenly he awoke and recalled the facts. The girl whom he had loved was dead--dead through his own cowardice. It was such loathly cowardice that he shuddered to think of it. All men would hate him, and yet their hatred would be nothing to his own hatred for himself. Every thought was a torture, a knife that went into his heart and brain, fiercely and with regular beat, stabbing and stabbing. He sprang from his bed, and dressed himself hurriedly. The house seemed to him to be strangely quiet. He called--in a parched, husky voice--and no one answered. All had left him: the very slaves had run away from such a master, and he was alone. No one, he thought, would come near him now. He had served as a laughing-stock for his friends: he was now too despicable to be laughed at. If you wish the villain of your drama to be hissed as villain was never hissed before, make him during the first two acts the low comedian of the piece. The man was trembling and shuddering. He made a small fire, and crouched down by it. Ah, if he only had it to do again! A million deaths were better than such torture as this. An impulse--irresistible almost--came over him to shriek aloud and to tear with his hands at something. Could he be going mad? The thought horrified him. He fetched wine, and drank it, and tried to calm himself, crouching down by the fire again. Suddenly he heard footsteps, and presently one of his old companions--and the worst man in Athens--stood before him. “You cur!” said his old companion.