present the dishes, might be seen
to grin and sneer, while the guests were helping themselves to the offered
dainties.

And once in a while the strangers seemed to taste something that they did
not like.

"Here is an odd kind of a spice in this dish," said one. "I can't say it
quite suits my palate. Down it goes, however."

"Send a good draught of wine down your throat," said his comrade on the
next throne. "That is the stuff to make this sort of cookery relish well.
Though I must needs say, the wine has a queer taste too. But the more I
drink of it the better I like the flavor."

Whatever little fault they might find with the dishes, they sat at dinner
a prodigiously long while; and it would really have made you ashamed to
see how they swilled down the liquor and gobbled up the food. They sat, on
golden thrones, to be sure; but they behaved like pigs in a sty, and, if
they had had their wits about them, they might have guessed that this was
the opinion of their beautiful hostess and her maidens. It brings a blush
into my face to reckon up, in my own mind, what mountains of meat and
pudding, and what gallons of wine, these two and twenty guzzlers and
gormandizers ate and drank. They forgot all about their homes, and their
wives, and children, and all about Ulysses, and everything else, except
this banquet, at which they wanted to keep feasting forever. But at length
they began to give over, from mere incapacity to hold any more.

"That last bit of fat is too much for me," said one.

"And I have not room for another morsel," said his next neighbor, heaving
a sigh. "What a pity! My appetite is as sharp as ever."

In short, they all left off eating, and leaned back on their thrones, with
such a stupid and helpless aspect as made them ridiculous to behold. When
their hostess saw this, she laughed aloud; so did her four damsels; so did
the two-and-twenty serving men that bore the dishes, and their
two-and-twenty fellows that poured out the wine. And the louder they all
laughed, the more stupid and helpless did the two-and-twenty gormandizers
look. Then the beautiful woman took her stand in the middle of the saloon,
and stretching out a slender rod (it had been all the while in her hand,
although they never noticed it till this moment), she turned it from one
guest to another, until each had felt it pointed at himself. Beautiful as
her face was, and though there was a smile on it, it looked just as wicked
and mischievo