Phanes smiled bitterly, and replied:  “Many thanks, Rhodopis, for these flattering words, and for the kind intention either to grieve over my departure, or if possible, to prevent it.  A hundred new faces will soon help you to forget mine, for long as you have lived on the Nile, you are still a Greek from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, and may thank the gods that you have remained so.  I am a great friend of constancy too, but quite as great an enemy of folly, and is there one among you who would not call it folly to fret over what cannot be undone?  I cannot call the Egyptian constancy a virtue, it is a delusion.  The men who treasure their dead for thousands of years, and would rather lose their last loaf than allow a single bone belonging to one of their ancestors to be taken from them, are not constant, they are foolish.  Can it possibly make me happy to see my friends sad?  Certainly not!  You must not imitate the Egyptians, who, when they lose a friend, spend months in daily-repeated lamentations over him.  On the contrary, if you will sometimes think of the distant, I ought to say, of the departed, friend, (for as long as I live I shall never be permitted to tread Egyptian ground again), let it be with smiling faces; do not cry, ’Ah! why was Phanes forced to leave us?’ but rather, ’Let us be merry, as Phanes used to be when he made one of our circle!’ In this way you must celebrate my departure, as Simonides enjoined when he sang: 

       “If we would only be more truly wise,
        We should not waste on death our tears and sighs,
        Nor stand and mourn o’er cold and lifeless clay
        More than one day.

        For Death, alas! we have no lack of time;
        But Life is gone, when scarcely at its prime,
        And is e’en, when not overfill’d with care
        But short and bare!”

“If we are not to weep for the dead, how much less ought we to grieve for absent friends! the former have left us for ever, but to the latter we say at parting, ‘Farewell, until we meet again’”

Here the Sybarite, who had been gradually becoming more and more impatient, could not keep silent any longer, and called out in the most woe begone tone:  “Will you never begin your story, you malicious fellow?  I cannot drink a single drop till you leave off talking about death.  I feel cold already, and I am always ill, if I only think of, nay, if I only hear the subject mentioned, that this life cannot last forever.”  The whole company burst into a laugh, and Phanes began to tell his story: 

“You know that at Sais I always live in the new palace; but at Memphis, as commander of the Greek body-guard which must accompany the king everywhere, a lodging was assigned me in the left wing of the old palace.

“Since Psamtik the First, Sais has always been the royal residence, and the other palaces have in consequence become somewhat neglected.  My dwelling was really splendidly situated, and beautifully furnished; it would have been first-rate, if, from the first moment of my entrance, a fearful annoyance had not made its appearance.