Charon isn't content to get rich
slowly; he must make money by the barrelful, if he has to sacrifice all
the comfort of everybody living on this river. Anybody'd think he was an
American, the way he goes on; and everybody else here is the same way. The
Erebeans are getting to be a race of shopkeepers."
"I think myself," sighed Cleopatra, "that Hades is being spoiled by the
introduction of American ideas--it is getting by far too democratic for my
tastes; and if it isn't stopped, it's my belief that the best people will
stop coming here. Take Madame Recamier's salon as it is now and compare it
with what it used to be! In the early days, after her arrival here,
everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you'd be sure of
meeting the intellectually elect. On the one hand you'd find Sophocles; on
the other, Cicero; across the room would be Horace chatting gayly with
some such person as myself. Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte,
were there, and glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like
Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto. You couldn't move
without stepping on the toes of genius. But now all is different. The
money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the result
that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at my place
last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for dinners.
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