46–47
Gnathonides
What did I tell them?—Timon was too good a man to be abandoned by Providence. How are you, Timon? as good-looking and good-tempered, as good a fellow, as ever?
Timon
And you, Gnathonides, still teaching vultures rapacity, and men cunning?
Gnathonides
Ah, he always liked his little joke. But where do you dine? I have brought a new song with me, a march out of the last musical thing on.
Timon
It will be a funeral march, then, and a very touching one, with spade obbligato.
Gnathonides
What means this? This is assault, Timon; just let me find a witness! ... Oh, my God, my God!... I'll have you before the Areopagus for assault and battery.
5
Timon
You’d better not wait much longer, or you'll have to make it murder.
Gnathonides
Mercy, mercy! ..- Now, a little gold ointment to heal the wound; it is a first-rate styptic.
Timon
What! you won’t go, won’t you?
Gnathonides
Oh, I am going. But you shall repent this. Alas, so genial once, and now so rude!
Timon
Now who is this with the bald crown?
10
Why, -it is Philiades; if there is a loathsome flatterer, it is he. When I sang that song that nobody else would applaud, he lauded me to the skies, and swore no dying swan could be more tuneful; his reward was one of my farms, and a £500 portion for his daughter. And then when he found I was ill, and had come to him for assistance, his generous aid took the form of blows.
