, turning to my companion, I
tried to draw as much information out of him as possible, and to get the
run of the gossip of the house, asking, in the first place, who the woman
was who was darting here and there about the room.

"Oh," said he, "that's Trimalchio's wife. Her name is Fortunata. She has
money to burn now, but a little while ago what do you suppose she was?
Your honor will excuse me for saying so, but really in those days you
wouldn't have taken a piece of bread from her hand. And now, without any
why or wherefore, she's at the top notch and is all the world to
Trimalchio--in fact, if she should say it was night at noonday, he'd
believe her. As for Trimalchio himself, he's so rich that he doesn't know
how much money he's got; but this jade has an eye to everything, even the
things that you wouldn't think about yourself. She doesn't drink, she's as
straight as a string--in fact, a really smart woman; but she has an
awfully sharp tongue, a regular magpie on a perch. If she likes any one,
she likes him way down to the ground, and if she doesn't like him, she
just hates him! Trimalchio's estates are so large that it would tire a
bird to fly over them, and he has heaps on heaps of cash. Take his silver
plate, for instance. Why, there's more of it in his janitor's office than
most persons have in their entire outfit; and his slaves--well, sir,
they're so numerous that I don't think a tenth part of them would
recognize their own master. In fact, when it comes to money, he can buy up
any of these chumps here ten times over; and there's no reason for his
paying out money for anything at all, because he produces everything on
his own place--wool and cedar wood and pepper--why, if you were to ask for
hens' milk, you'd get it. To give you an instance: He found that he wasn't
getting very good wool, so he bought some rams at Tarentum and changed the
breed of his sheep. Again, because he wanted to have Athenian honey right
here on his estate, he imported bees from Athens, and incidentally these
improved the breed of the native bees also. Only a few days ago he wrote
and ordered mushroom-seed to be sent him from India. He hasn't a single
mule on his place that wasn't sired by a wild ass. Just see how many
cushions he has here. Every single one of them has either purple or
scarlet stuffing. That's what I call being rich. But you're not to suppose
that his associates here are to be sneezed at, for they've got plenty of
rocks