ands, Lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might
get off their wares or their jewellery at any price, and the
good-natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done
him a piece of courtesy in letting him have the refusal of such precious
commodities. So that by this means his house was thronged with
superfluous purchases, of no use but to swell uneasy and ostentatious
pomp; and his person was still more inconveniently beset with a crowd of
these idle visitors, lying poets, painters, sharking tradesmen, lords,
ladies, needy courtiers, and expectants, who continually filled his
lobbies, raining their fulsome flatteries in whispers in his ears,
sacrificing to him with adulation as to a God, making sacred the very
stirrup by which he mounted his horse, and seeming as though they drank
the free air but through his permission and bounty.

Some of these daily dependants were young men of birth, who (their means
not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by
creditors, and redeemed thence by Lord Timon; these young prodigals
thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he
were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers,
who, not being able to follow him in his wealth, found it easier to copy
him in prodigality and copious spending of what was their own. One of
these flesh-flies was Ventidius, for whose debts, unjustly contracted,
Timon but lately had paid down the sum of five talents.

But among this confluence, this great flood of visitors, none were more
conspicuous than the makers of presents and givers of gifts. It was
fortunate for these men if Timon took a fancy to a dog or a horse, or
any piece of cheap furniture which was theirs. The thing so praised,
whatever it was, was sure to be sent the next morning with the
compliments of the giver for Lord Timon's acceptance, and apologies for
the unworthiness of the gift; and this dog or horse, or whatever it
might be, did not fail to produce from Timon's bounty, who would not be
outdone in gifts, perhaps twenty dogs or horses, certainly presents of
far richer worth, as these pretended donors knew well enough, and that
their false presents were but the putting out of so much money at large
and speedy interest. In this way Lord Lucius had lately sent to Timon a
present of four milk-white horses, trapped in silver, which this cunning
lord had observed Timon upon some occasion to comm