He kept his life and his property safe through all those years of peril and proscription, with less sacrifice of principle than many who had made louder professions, and diedby a singular act of voluntary starvation, to make short work with an incurable diseaseat a ripe old age; a godless Epicurean, no doubt, but not the worst of them.

Their rank and culture secured them the intimacy of all who were best worth knowing in Roman circles; and the general dignity and morality which marked their lives would free them from all likelihood of being thrown into close intercourse with the numerous class of luxurious epicureans, whose unblushing and unbounded vice gave an infamous notority to the capital of the world.

Except the gout, this savage old epicurean never knew a day's sickness.