 with the vice I
just now mentioned. Minos told me I was infinitely too bad for Elysium; and as
for the other place, the devil had sworn he would never entertain a poet for
Orpheus's sake: so I was forced to return again to the place from whence I
came.«
 

                              Chapter Twenty-Five

          Julian performs the parts of a knight and a dancing-master.

I now mounted the stage in Sicily, and became a knight-templar; but, as my
adventures differ so little from those I have recounted you in the character of
a common soldier, I shall not tire you with repetition. The soldier and the
captain differ in reality so little from one another, that it requires an
accurate judgment to distinguish them; the latter wears finer cloaths, and in
times of success lives somewhat more delicately; but as to everything else, they
very nearly resemble one another.
    »My next step was into France, where fortune assigned me the part of a
dancing-master. I was so expert in my profession that I was brought to court in
my youth, and had the heels of Philip de Valois, who afterwards succeeded
Charles the Fair, committed to my direction.«
    »I do not remember that in any of the characters in which I appeared on
earth I ever assumed to myself a greater dignity, or thought myself of more real
importance, than now. I looked on dancing as the greatest excellence of human
nature, and on myself as the greatest proficient in it. And, indeed, this seemed
to be the general opinion of the whole court; for I was the chief instructor of
the youth of both sexes, whose merit was almost entirely defined by the advances
they made in that science which I had the honour to profess. As to myself, I was
so fully persuaded of this truth, that I not only slighted and despised those
who were ignorant of dancing, but I thought the highest character I could give
any man was that he made a graceful bow: for want of which accomplishment I had
a sovereign contempt for most persons of learning; nay, for some officers in the
army, and a few even of the courtiers themselves.«
    »Though so little of my youth had been thrown away in what they call
literature that I could hardly write and read, yet I composed a treatise on
education; the first rudiments of which, as I taught, were to instruct a child
in the science of coming handsomely into a room. In this I corrected many faults
of my predecessors, particularly that of being too much in a hurry,
