good. And when he was feasting in the
midst of all these flatterers and mock friends, when they were eating
him up, and draining his fortunes dry with large draughts of richest
wines drunk to his health and prosperity, he could not perceive the
difference of a friend from a flatterer, but to his deluded eyes (made
proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort to have so many,
like brothers commanding one another's fortunes (though it was his own
fortune which paid all the cost), and with joy they would run over
at the spectacle of such, as it appeared to him, truly festive and
fraternal meeting.

But while he thus outwent the very heart of kindness, and poured out
his bounty, as if Plutus, the god of gold, had been but his steward;
while thus he proceeded without care or stop, so senseless of expence
that he would neither enquire how he could maintain it, nor cease his
wild flow of riot; his riches, which were not infinite, must needs
melt away before a prodigality which knew no limits. But who should
tell him so? his flatterers? they had an interest in shutting his
eyes. In vain did his honest steward Flavius try to represent to him
his condition, laying his accounts before him, begging of him, praying
of him, with an importunity that on any other occasion would have been
unmannerly in a servant, beseeching him with tears, to look into the
state of his affairs. Timon would still put him off, and turn the
discourse to something else; for nothing is so deaf to remonstrance
as riches turned to poverty, nothing is so unwilling to believe its
situation, nothing so incredulous to its own true state, and hard to
give credit to a reverse. Often had this good steward, this honest
creature, when all the rooms of Timon's great house have been choked
up with riotous feeders at his master's cost, when the floors have
wept with drunken spilling of wine, and every apartment has blazed
with lights and resounded with music and feasting, often had he
retired by himself to some solitary spot, and wept faster than the
wine ran from the wasteful casks within, to see the mad bounty of his
lord, and to think, when the means were gone which bought him praises
from all sorts of people, how quickly the breath would be gone of
which the praise was made; praises won in feasting would be lost
in fasting, and at one cloud of winter-showers these flies would
disappear.

But now the time was come that Timon could shut his ears no longer to
t