to interrupt the
savage quiet of Timon's solitude. For now the day was come when the
ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they
had done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild
boar, was raging at the walls of their city, and with his hot siege
threatened to lay fair Athens in the dust. And now the memory of lord
Timon's former prowess and military conduct came fresh into their
forgetful minds, for Timon had been their general in past times, and
was a valiant and expert soldier, who alone of all the Athenians was
deemed able to cope with a besieging army, such as then threatened
them, or to drive back the furious approaches of Alcibiades.

A deputation of the senators was chosen in this emergency to wait upon
Timon. To him they come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in
extremity, they had shewn but small regard; as if they presumed upon
his gratitude whom they had disobliged, and had derived a claim to his
courtesy from their own most discourteous and unpiteous treatment.

Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him with tears, to return and
save that city, from which their ingratitude had so lately driven
him; now they offer him riches, power, dignities, satisfaction for
past injuries, and public honours and the public love; their persons,
lives, and fortunes, to be at his disposal, if he will but come back
and save them. But Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer
lord Timon, the lord of bounty, the flower of valour, their defence
in war, their ornament in peace. If Alcibiades killed his countrymen,
Timon cared not. If he sacked fair Athens, and slew her old men and
her infants, Timon would rejoice. So he told them; and that there
was not a knife in the unruly camp which he did not prize above the
reverendest throat in Athens.

This was all the answer he vouchsafed to the weeping disappointed
senators; only at parting, he bade them commend him to his countrymen,
and tell them, that to ease them of their griefs and anxieties, and to
prevent the consequences of fierce Alcibiades' wrath, there was yet a
way left, which he would teach them, for he had yet so much affection
left for his dear countrymen as to be willing to do them a kindness
before his death. These words a little revived the senators, who hoped
that his kindness for their city was returning. Then Timon told them
that he had a tree, which grew near his cave, which he should shortly
have occasio