‘Look here, my youth; you seem too ingenuous for a monk. Don’t flatter yourself that it will last. If you can wear the sheepskin, and haunt the churches here for a month, without learning to lie, and slander, and clap, and hoot, and perhaps play your part in a sedition--and--murder satyric drama--why, you are a better man than I take you for. I, sir, am a Greek and a philosopher; though the whirlpool of matter may have, and indeed has, involved my ethereal spark in the body of a porter. Therefore, youth,’ continued the little man, starting up upon his baulk like an excited monkey, and stretching out one oratorio paw, ‘I bear a treble hatred to the monkish tribe. First, as a man and a husband;.... for as for the smiles of beauty, or otherwise,--such as I have, I have; and the monks, if they had their wicked will, would leave neither men nor women in the world. Sir, they would exterminate the human race in a single generation, by a voluntary suicide! Secondly, as a porter; for if all men turned monks, nobody would be idle, and the profession of portering would be annihilated. Thirdly, sir, as a philosopher; for as the false coin is odious to the true, so is the irrational and animal asceticism of the monk, to the logical and methodic self-restraint of one who, like your humblest of philosophers, aspires to a life according to the pure reason.’
‘And pray,’ asked Philammon, half laughing, ‘who has been your tutor in philosophy?’
‘The fountain of classic wisdom, Hypatia herself. As the ancient sage--the name is unimportant to a monk--pumped water nightly that he might study by day, so I, the guardian of cloaks and parasols, at the sacred doors of her lecture-room, imbibe celestial knowledge. From my youth I felt in me a soul above the matter-entangled herd. She revealed to me the glorious fact, that I am a spark of Divinity itself. A fallen star, I am, sir!’ continued he, pensively, stroking his lean stomach--‘a fallen star!--fallen, if the dignity of philosophy will allow of the simile, among the hogs of the lower world--indeed, even into the hog-bucket itself. Well, after all, I will show you the way to the Archbishop’s. There is a philosophic pleasure in opening one’s treasures to the modest young. Perhaps you will assist me by carrying this basket of fruit?’ And the little man jumped up, put his basket on Philammon’s head, and trotted off up a neighbouring street.