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Why it was called The Sybarites I have never discovered. I did not read the book because I was sick and tired of the author and his nonsense, but I imbibed, in spite of myself, something of the story and its moral from hearing it talked about. The Celebrity himself had listened to arguments on the subject with great serenity, and was nothing loth to give his opinion when appealed to.
"I can't say that I do; that is, nothing but what he has told me." "If you will forgive my curiosity," I said, "what has he told you?" "He says he is the author of The Sybarites," she answered, her lip curling, "but of course I do not believe that, now." "But that happens to be true," I said, smiling. She clapped her hands.
The Carlovingian courts, the courts of the De Medici, the Valois, and long before that, the great houses that lay around the Roman hills. Dragged from their villages, east, west, north and south, they flitted in the trappings of servitude through the vast halls of tyrants, barons, Caesars, sybarites, debauchees.
Arnaud had, last August, the courage to complain of this infamous neglect, in the National Institute. "The youth," said he, "receive no other instruction but lessons to march, to fire, to bow, to dance, to sit, to lie, and to impose with a good grace. I do not ask for Spartans or Romans, but we want Athenians, and our schools are only forming Sybarites."
From New York, Mrs. Crocker and I went abroad. And it so chanced, in December, that we were staying a few days at a country-place in Sussex, and the subject of The Sybarites was broached at a dinner-party. The book was then having its sale in England. "Crocker," said our host, "do you happen to have met the author of that book? He's an American."
Some local authority, I forget who, has deduced from the fact that there are so many forges and smiths' shops here that this must be the spot to which the over-sensitive inhabitants of Sybaris banished their workers in metal and other noisy professions. Now the millionaires would like to be thought Sybarites by descent, but it is hardly respectable to draw a pedigree from these outcasts.
I have in general remarked, that the republicans are either of the species I have just been describing, waiters, jockies, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, living in great splendour, or men taken from laborious professions, more sincere in their principles, more ignorant and brutal and who dissipate what they have gained in gross luxury, because they have been told that elegance and delicacy are worthy only of Sybarites, and that the Greeks and Romans despised both.
From New York, Mrs. Crocker and I went abroad. And it so chanced, in December, that we were staying a few days at a country-place in Sussex, and the subject of The Sybarites was broached at a dinner-party. The book was then having its sale in England. "Crocker," said our host, "do you happen to have met the author of that book? He's an American."
These sayings and the thought of the author of The Sybarites stifling below with his mouth to an auger-hole kept us in a continual state of merriment. And at last our visitor rose to go. As he was stepping over the side, Mr. Cooke laid hold of a brass button and pressed a handful of the black cigars upon him. "My regards to the detective, old man," said he. McCann stared.
Also is found there a certain Château Margaux of '48: after savoring that rich liquid velvet, you wilt not wonder that the house has long been a favorite with the Southern Sybarites. Things are changed, of course, now, and many of Mr. Cranston's old patrons must now exercise their critical tastes on mountain whisky and ration beef; but the tone of feeling in the establishment remains the same.
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