Plutarch’s man stood up and took a few paces, containing his indignation, as if saying to himself, as someone else once did: “Ah! I must be there, too, along with my Athenians!” And from time to time, he would murmur: “Zeus, Dionysus, Aphrodite . . .” I then recalled that he had once been accused of disobeying the gods, and wondered to myself where this posthumous and, therefore, artificial indignation came from. I was forgetting—me, a devotee of Greek!—I was forgetting that he was also a consummate hypocrite, an illustrious fraudster. However, I scarcely had time to think this, because Alcibiades suddenly stopped his pacing and declared that he would go to the ball with me.

“To the ball?” I repeated in astonishment.

“Yes, to the ball. Let’s go to the ball.”

I was terrified and told him that it was impossible, that they wouldn’t let him in wearing that outfit; he would look ridiculous; unless, of course, he wanted to go there to perform one of Aristophanes’s comedies, I added, laughing so as to hide my fear. What I really wanted was to leave him there in the house, and, once I was outside, rather than going to the Cassino, I would come straight to see you. But the wretched man would not budge; while listening to me, he stared down at the floor, as if deep in thought. I stopped talking; I began to think that the nightmare would soon end, that the apparition would disappear, and that I would be left there alone with my trousers, my shoes, and my century.

“I want to go to the ball,” he repeated. “I can’t go back without comparing dances.”

“My dear Alcibiades, I really don’t think it wise. It would certainly be a great honor, and give me enormous pride, to introduce you, the most genteel and charming of Athenians, to the Cassino. But the other men, the young lads and lasses, the older folk . . . Well, it’s just impossible.”

“Why?”

“I’ve already told you; they will think you’re a lunatic or a comedian, because of your clothes . . .”

“What about them? Clothes change. I’ll go in modern clothes. Don’t you have anything you can lend me?”

I was about to say no, but then it occurred to me that the most urgent thing was to get out of the house and that, once outside, I’d have more chance of escaping, and so I told him that I did.

“Well, then,” he replied as he stood up, “I’ll go in modern clothes. All I ask is that you get dressed first, so that I can learn and then copy you.”