My views on dining are easily deducible from my whole past life; though daily importuned by far richer men than you to join them, I invariably refuse; I know too well the tumults and follies that attend the wine-cup. But if there is one whose neglect I may fairly resent, it is yourself; the fruit of my long and unremitting attentions to you is to find myself not on the roll of your friends; I, your next-door neighbour, am singled out for exclusion. The sting of it is in the personal ingratitude; happiness for me is not found in a plate of wild boar or hare or pastry; these I get in abundance at the houses of people who understand the proprieties; this very day I might have dined (and well, by all accounts) with my pupil Pammenes; but he pressed me to no purpose; I was reserving myself, poor fool, for you.
