Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/158

148 crammed into the litter with the cook and my lady's woman, with scarce straw enough to keep you warm." And the writer goes on to relate a veritable anecdote, told him, as he declares, by a Stoic philosopher who had been so unfortunate as thus to hire himself out into the service of a rich Roman lady. The story reads almost like a bit out of Swift. Travelling one day into the country in the suite of his patroness, he found a seat allotted him next a perfumed and smooth-shaven gentleman who held an equivocal position in the lady's household, and whose bearing might answer to that of the French dancing-master of modern satirists; not a very suitable companion for the grave philosopher, who rather prided himself on a venerable beard and dignified deportment. Just as they were starting, the lady, with tears in her eyes, appealed to his known kindness of heart to do her a personal favour. Even a philosopher could not refuse a request couched in such terms. "Will you then so far oblige me," said she, "as just to take my dear little dog Myrrhina with you in the carriage, and nurse her carefully? She is not at all well, poor dear—in fact, very near her accouchement; and those abominable careless servants of mine will give themselves no trouble about me,—much less about her." So, during the whole journey, there was the little beast peeping out of the grave philosopher's cloak, yelping at intervals, and now and then licking his face, and making herself disagreeable in divers ways; giving occasion to his companion to remark, with a mincing wit, that he had become a Cynic philosoperphilosopher [sic] instead of a Stoic for