_Her_. Attend please, gentlemen all. A most valuable article, this, and calls for a long purse. Look at him. A sweet thing in creeds. A creed for a king. Has any gentleman a use for the Lap of Luxury? Who bids? _Third D_. Come and tell me what you know. If you are a practical creed, I will have you. _Her_. Please not to worry him with questions, sir. He is drunk, and cannot answer; his tongue plays him tricks, as you see. _Third D_. And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned reprobate? How he smells of scent! And how he slips and staggers about! Well, you must speak for him, Hermes. What can he do? What is his line? _Her_. Well, for any gentleman who is not strait-laced, who loves a pretty girl, a bottle, and a jolly companion, he is the very thing. He is also a past master in gastronomy, and a connoisseur in voluptuousness generally. He was educated at Athens, and has served royalty in Sicily [Footnote: See _Aristippus_ in Notes.], where he had a very good character. Here are his principles in a nutshell: Think the worst of things: make the most of things: get all possible pleasure out of things. _Third D_. You must look for wealthier purchasers. My purse is not equal to such a festive creed. _Her_. Zeus, this lot seems likely to remain on our hands. _Zeus_. Put it aside, and up with another. Stay, take the pair from Abdera and Ephesus; the creeds of Smiles and Tears. They shall make one lot. _Her_. Come forward, you two. Lot No. 4. A superlative pair. The smartest brace of creeds on our catalogue. _Fourth D_. Zeus! What a difference is here! One of them does nothing but laugh, and the other might be at a funeral; he is all tears.—You there! what is the joke? _Democr_. You ask? You and your affairs are all one vast joke. _Fourth D_. So! You laugh at us? Our business is a toy? _Democr_. It is. There is no taking it seriously. All is vanity. Mere interchange of atoms in an infinite void. _Fourth D_. _Your_ vanity is infinite, if you like. Stop that laughing, you rascal.—And you, my poor fellow, what are you crying for? I must see what I can make of you. _Heracl_. I am thinking, friend, upon human affairs; and well may I weep and lament, for the doom of all is sealed. Hence my compassion and my sorrow. For the present, I think not of it; but the future!—the future is all bitterness. Conflagration and destruction of the world. I weep to think that nothing abides. All things are whirled together in confusion. Pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, great and small; up and down they go, the playthings of Time. _Fourth D_. And what is Time? _Heracl_. A child; and plays at draughts and blindman's-bluff. _Fourth D_. And men? _Heracl_. Are mortal Gods. _Fourth D_. And Gods? _Heracl_. Immortal men. _Fourth D_. So! Conundrums, fellow? Nuts to crack? You are a very oracle for obscurity. _Heracl_. Your affairs do not interest me. _Fourth D_. No one will be fool enough to bid for you at that rate.