short, scary Ghost Stories home | Classic Ghost Stories
WANTED short, scary ghost stories - fiction or factual - for publication on this site.If published, we will be happy to list author's biographical details and a link back to your Web site.Copyright will remain with authors. Send submissions/outlines to abracad.
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Raven Edition Volume 5
BON-BON
page 6 of 8 | page 1 | Table of Contents
 |
Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.
"A clever book that of yours, Pierre," resumed his Majesty, tapping our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass after a thorough compliance with his visiter's injunction. "A clever book that of yours, upon my honor. It's a work after my own heart. Your arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be improved, and many of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well know to what divine moral truth I am alluding?"
"Cannot say that I -"
"Indeed! - why it was I who told Aristotle that by sneezing, men expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis."
"Which is - hiccup! - undoubtedly the case," said the metaphysician, while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseux, and offered his snuff-box to the fingers of his visiter.
"There was Plato, too," continued his Majesty, modestly declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied - "there was Plato, too, for whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew Plato, Bon-Bon? - ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for an idea. I bade him write, down that o nous estin aulos. He said that he would do so, and went home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience smote me for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher's chair as he was inditing the 'aulos.'"
"Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down. So the sentence now read 'o nous estin augos', and is, you perceive, the fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics."
"Were you ever at Rome?" asked the restaurateur, as he finished his second bottle of Mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of Chambertin.
But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time," said the devil, as if reciting some passage from a book - "there was a time when occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people, and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power - at that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon - at that time only I was in Rome, and I have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy."*
{*2} Ils ecrivaient sur la Philosophie (_Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca_) mais c'etait la Philosophie Grecque. - _Condorcet_.
"What do you think of - what do you think of - hiccup! - Epicurus?"
"What do I think of whom?" said the devil, in astonishment, "you cannot surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir? - I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by Diogenes Laertes."
"That's a lie!" said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a little into his head.
"Very well! - very well, sir! - very well, indeed, sir!" said his Majesty, apparently much flattered.
"That's a lie!" repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically; "that's a - hiccup! - a lie!"
"Well, well, have it your own way!" said the devil, pacifically, and Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at argument, thought it his duty to conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.
"As I was saying," resumed the visiter - "as I was observing a little while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about the soul? Pray, sir, what is the soul?"
"The - hiccup! - soul," replied the metaphysician, referring to his MS., "is undoubtedly-"