"Tell the head cook to add a dressing of red pepper to the truffles!" VII At Nicomedia, at Pergamos, and at Smyrna Julian, now nineteen years old and an enthusiast for Hellenic wisdom, had heard much of the famous mage and sophist, Iamblicus of Chaldea, a pupil of the Neo-Platonist, Porphyrius. Men used commonly to call him "the Divine" Iamblicus. In order to see this master, Julian made a journey to Ephesus. Iamblicus was a little thin and wrinkled old man. He liked complaining of his ailments--gout, rheumatism, nervous headache; he abused physicians, but was zealous in carrying out their advice, and used to speak with deep interest of drugs and infusions of herbs. He always wore, even in summer, a double tunic; never seemed warm enough, and would sit basking in the sun like a lizard. From his youth up Iamblicus had broken himself of the habit of meat-eating, and spoke of it with disgust as a practice beyond his comprehension. His servant used to prepare for him a special broth, made of barley-water, warm wine, and honey, he being toothless and unable to masticate bread. He was always surrounded by numberless admiring students who had travelled from Rome, Antioch, Carthagena; from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia, to become his pupils. All stoutly believed Iamblicus could work miracles. Iamblicus treated them like a father irritated at seeing round him so many weaklings. When they began to discuss and to wrangle, the master would make a sweeping gesture, followed by a grimace expressive of physical pain. He spoke gently, and in a low-toned, agreeable voice; the louder other folk shouted the more subdued his own tone became. He hated all noise, and quarrelsome voices as much as creaking sandals. Julian gazed in disappointed perplexity at this chilly, sickly, and whimsical old man. What power drew towards him the world of philosophy? He remembered the story of pupils--that one night the divine master during prayer was upraised by some invisible force to a height of twelve cubits from earth, wrapped in a golden glory. Another tale was about a miracle, by which the master had smitten from a rock two warm springs, Eros and Anteros, the two Dæmons of love--the one dull-souled, the other joyous. Iamblicus, it was said, had caressed both, like children, and at a word caused them to disappear.