A DASTARDLY AESTHETE

Let's be honest: some aesthetes/epicureans, like Lord Wotton, are just cozy-hearted. But there is another breed (let's call it Wallensteinian, for an obvious reason), that are corrupted by such a carefree lifestyle. Here you can find, pêle-mêle, drug addicts, Wallenstein-like social climbers whose thirst for earthly enjoyment can't be quenched, and many other depraved subspecies.
One such corrupt scoundrel was depicted by General Lew Wallace, the creator of Ben-Hur, in a lesser-known novel of his.
Dear readers, cross your fingers and hold tight, for Miss Dermark is proud as a peacock to introduce... (Drum rolls)... Demedes the Epicurean!

A genius thoroughly wicked—such was Demedes.
"Nature is the lawgiver; the happiness of man (read: of humankind) is the primary object of Nature: hence for youth, Pleasure; for old age, Repentance and Piety, the life hereafter being a respectable conjecture.", he said.
This was the motto in full, known only to the initiated—"Patience, Courage, Judgment in the pursuit of Pleasure".
Neither the money nor the time spent in this part of the preparation was begrudged; on the contrary, Demedes took delight in the occupation; it was exercise for ingenuity, taste, and judgment, always a pleasure to such as possess the qualities. In fact, the whole way through he likened himself to a bird building a nest for its mate.
Here we have a Palace of Pleasure illustrative of Epicureanism according to Demedes. The expense and care required to make it an actuality beget the inference that the float, rough outside, splendid within, was for a whole harem. Whosoever the favorite of the hour might be, the three pavilions were certainly the assigned limits of their beings; while the getting rid of her would be never so easy—the water flowing, no one knew whence or whither, was horribly suggestive. Once installed there, it was supposed that longings for the upper world would go gradually out. The mistress, with nothing to wish for not at hand, was to be a Queen, with Demedes and his chosen of the philosophic circle for her ministers. In other words, the Academic Temple in the upper world was but a place of meeting; this was the Temple in fact. There the gentle priests talked business; here they worshipped; and of their psalter and litany, their faith and ceremonial practices, enough that the new substitute for religion was only a reembodiment of an old philosophy with the narrowest psychical idea for creed; namely, that the principle of Present Life was all there was in man (read: humankind, as before) worth culture and gratification.