"'A friend of mine, Mrs Oofry Blazing, who talks French admirably, and whose teeth are the envy of her nose, declared: "_Cet homme est un fumiste_." Of course, he sold us fumes, instead of perfumes. One amongst us, an American woman of the third sex, told the man publicly straight into his face, and with inimitable delicacy of touch: "Sir, what are you here for?" Quite so; what _was_ he there for? We wanted Plato, and nothing but Plato. One fairly expected him to begin every sentence with P's, or Pl's. Instead of that he wandered from one subject to another. One day he talked about the general and the particular; the other day about the particular and the general. But what particular is there in a general, I beg of you? Is an admiral not much more important? We do not trouble about the army at all. And then, and chiefly, what has a general to do with Plato? The lectures were not on military matters, but on the most immaterial matters, which yet matter materially. But, of course, now that you tell me that Socrates, Plato's master, was a he-midwife, I can very well understand that his modern disciples are philosophical miscarriages!'" * * * * * The gods laughed heartily, and Sappho asked Plato how he liked the remarks of Entréa. Plato smiled and made Sappho blush by reminding her what the little ones had at all times said of her, although not a tittle of truth was in it. "No ordinary citizen, nor his wife," he added, "ever wants to know persons or things as they really are. They only want to know what they imagine or desire to be the truth. This is the reason why so many men before the public take up a definite pose, the one demanded by the public. This they do, not out of sheer fatuity, but of necessity. A king could not afford to sing in public, no matter how well he sang; it does not fit the image the public likes to form about a king. In fact, the better he sang, the more harm it would do him. I have always impressed the little ones as a mystic, an enthusiast, a blessed spirit, as you Goethe used to call me. Yet my principal aim was Apollo, and not Dionysus; clearness, and not the _clair-obscur_ of trances."