of a reverse; such summer-birds are men. But now with music and state
the banquet of smoking dishes was served up; and when the guests had
a little done admiring whence the bankrupt Timon could find means to
furnish so costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene which they
saw was real, as scarce trusting their own eyes; at a signal given,
the dishes were uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared: instead of
those varieties and far-fetched dainties which they expected, that
Timon's epicurean table in past times had so liberally presented, now
appeared under the covers of these dishes a preparation more suitable
to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and luke-warm water,
fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were
indeed smoke, and their hearts luke-warm and slippery as the water,
with which Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding them,
"Uncover, dogs, and lap;" and before they could recover their
surprise, sprinkling it in their faces, that they might have enough,
and throwing dishes and all after them, who now ran huddling out,
lords, ladies, with their caps snatched up in haste, a splendid
confusion, Timon pursuing them, still calling them what they were,
"Smooth, smiling parasites, destroyers under the mask of courtesy,
affable wolves, meek bears, fools of fortune, feast-friends,
time-flies." They, crowding out to avoid him, left the house more
willingly than they had entered it; some losing their gowns and caps,
and some their jewels in the hurry, all glad to escape out of the
presence of such a mad lord, and the ridicule of his mock banquet.

This was the last feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took
farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook
himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon
all mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and
the houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest
humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases, might fasten upon its
inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, both
young and old, high and low; so wishing, he went to the woods, where
he said he should find the unkindest beast much kinder than those of
his own species. He stripped himself naked, that he might retain no
fashion of a man, and dug a cave to live in, and lived solitary in the
manner of a beast, eating the wild roots, and drinking water, flying
from the face of his kind, and cho