XIII
1
Why, I fancy I hear you say, do you pursue so laboriously those frivolous explanations of yours, by which no one is made either more accomplished or more virtuous? You tell us all about the formation of snow; it would be far more to the point that we should be told why it is a wrong thing for snow to be bought.70 I see you wish to drag me into a dispute with luxury, a quarrel of daily occurrence that never leads to any tangible result. Let us withal brace ourselves for the struggle; even if luxury win the day, it must find us fighting and resisting to the death.
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Well then! do you suppose that the examination of nature, irrelevant as it may appear, makes no contribution to the object you have at heart? When we inquire how snow is formed, telling that its character resembles hoar-frost, containing more air than water, do you not think that it is a reproach upon the epicures? If it is a scandalous thing to buy water, they are still worse, for they do not get even water [but chiefly air] for their money. Let us, I say, inquire rather how snow is formed than how it is preserved. The means of preservation have already been discovered; not content with racking wines of vintage, arranging them by flavour and age, we have devised means of compressing snow to overcome the power of summer, and of protecting it by the coolness of the icehouses from the hotness of the season. And what have we accomplished by all our anxious efforts? The privilege of buying water that we might have got for nothing! We are vexed that we cannot buy air and sunlight, and that the atmosphere all around streams in easily and unbought upon the fastidious and the rich. How badly nature treats us in leaving anything that is common property! Upon this other element, water, which nature has allowed to flow for the free use of mankind, and which she has given the whole world to drink, this that she has shed forth with lavish prodigality for the service alike of man and of beasts and birds and the very laziest of the animal creation—upon this, luxury, with ill-conceived ingenuity, has managed to put a price. In fact, nothing can please luxury unless it is expensive. Water was the one thing that used to bring down the rich to the level of the common herd, in which the wealthy could not surpass the very poorest. Those who found their riches a burden have devised a plan whereby water should become a luxury.
5
How it has come about that no running water should be thought cool enough, I will now explain. As long as the stomach is healthy and is able to relish wholesome food, with which it is satisfied and not overloaded, it is quite content with the natural stimulants. But when through daily indigestion it suffers from the heat not of the season but of its own indulgence, when habitual drunkenness has taken firm hold on the organs of life, and turns into bile which parches the intestines, then it becomes necessary to seek out some means of quenching the internal heat. Water merely inflames it, the disease is aggravated by the remedies. Therefore, for this purpose they use snow for drink, not only in summer, but even in the depths of winter. The cause can be no other than the internal complaint. Digestion is spoiled through indulgence; respite is never given it in which to rest. Breakfast is heaped upon a supper prolonged till daylight. While the revellers are literally bursting with the lavishness and variety of the courses, heavy drinking plunges them still deeper in the mire.
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Then the continuous excess causes heartburn from the food previously consumed, and inflames the constant craving for some new stimulant. So, though they protect the banqueting hall with draperies and windows, and seek by roaring fires to banish winter’s colds, none the less the languishing appetite, exhausted by its own heat, yearns for something new to revive it. Just as we sprinkle cold water on people who have lost consciousness through a fainting fit, in order to bring them back to their senses; so the internal organs, numbed through excess, are past feeling, unless they are smitten by the parching, as it were, of more violent cold. Hence it is, I say, that not content even with snow, they call for ice, as if the stimulant were the more certain from its solidity, and melt it with repeated douches of water. The ice, too, is not taken from the surface, but, that it may have greater virtue and more lasting cold, it is dug out of the depths of the pile. Thus it is not even of uniform price; but water actually has its hawkers and—alas the day!—a varying price. The Lacedaemonians once banished the perfumers from their city, ordering them to quit the country with all speed, because they were wasting the oil supply. What would they have done, I wonder, if they had seen cold stores for preserving snow and such an army of beasts employed in carting water, whose colour and flavour are often all spoiled by the straw in which it is kept?
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Good heavens! how easy a thing it is to quench the thirst of health! But what feeling can jaws retain that are deadened and numbed by scalding food? These epicures can have nothing cold enough, neither can they have anything hot enough. Mushrooms taken from the fire and hastily dipped in their special sauce are crammed down the throat almost boiling, and the heat has to be allayed by draughts chilled in snow. One may see, I tell you, slender youths, rigged out in cloaks and mufflers, pale and sickly, not merely sipping the snow, but actually eating it, throwing little pieces of it into their glasses to prevent them from getting warm during the intervals of drinking. Do you call that honest thirst? It is fever, the more acute too as it cannot be detected by the pulse or the wonted heat that overspreads the skin. The very heart is dried up by that incurable malady, luxury, whose habitual weakness and unsteadiness are turned into endurance and obstinacy. Don’t you know that habit dulls the force of everything? The snow in which you are now, so to speak, swimming71 has through custom and the daily slavery of the stomach come to occupy the place of water. You must now search for something colder still; for a stimulant that is habitual is no stimulant at all.