_Not fire, nor steel, nor bronze can keep_
from making their way to a dinner. Nor yet with those female toadies of Cyprus, who, after their transference to Syria, were [Sidenote: E] called ‘pair o’ steps’ from the fact that they used to allow the king’s wife to mount her carriage over their bent backs.
Against whom, then, are we to be on our guard? Against the man who is not confessedly or apparently a toady; one who is not to be found hanging about the kitchen, nor to be caught watching the dial with a dinner in prospect; one who is not to be made tipsy and then pitched into any corner; but one who for the most part keeps sober and bustling, thinking it his business to take part in all your doings, and to be privy to your confidential talk—the man, in short, who acts the rôle of friend, not in the satyric[49] or comic style, but in the high tragic. According to Plato, ‘the extreme of dishonesty is to appear honest when you are not.’ So with time-serving. It is [Sidenote: F] to be regarded as dangerous, not when confessed, but when undetected; when it wears a serious, not an amusing, air. In this form, unless we are careful, it casts a slur of discredit even upon genuine friendship, the points of coincidence being numerous. When the Mage was trying to escape and Gobryes had plunged with him into a dark room and was grappling with him, Darius stood at a loss what to do. ‘Stab,’ said Gobryes, ‘though you stab both.’ With us it is not so easy, inasmuch as we can by no means give any sanction to the maxim: ‘_Perish friend, if so perish foe._’ There are so many points of similarity to complicate the fawner with the friend that we must find it a most parlous business to tear the one from the other. We may either be casting out the good thing along with the bad, [Sidenote: 51] or, in trying to spare the right thing, we may let the wrong one bring us to grief. There are wild plants of which the seeds are similar in shape and size to those of wheat. When the two are mixed it is difficult to sift these out; they will not fall through smaller holes, and, if the holes are wider, one falls through as much as the other. No less difficult is it to separate time-serving from friendship, when it blends itself with every feeling, every movement, need, and habit.