ing; called us all by name, just like he was
one of us! And so provisions were cheap as dirt in those days. The loaf
you got for an as, you couldn't eat, not even if someone helped you, but
you see them no bigger than a bull's eye now, and the hell of it is that
things are getting worse every day; this colony grows backwards like a
calf's tall! Why do we have to put up with an AEdile here, who's not
worth three Caunian figs and who thinks more of an as than of our lives?
He has a good time at home, and his daily income's more than another
man's fortune. I happen to know where he got a thousand gold pieces.
If we had any nuts, he'd not be so damned well pleased with himself!
Nowadays, men are lions at home and foxes abroad. What gets me is, that
I've already eaten my old clothes, and if this high cost of living keeps
on, I'll have to sell my cottages! What's going to happen to this town,
if neither gods nor men take pity on it? May I never have any luck if I
don't believe all this comes from the gods! For no one believes that
heaven is heaven, no one keeps a fast, no one cares a hang about Jupiter:
they all shut their eyes and count up their own profits. In the old
days, the married women, in their stolas, climbed the hill in their bare
feet, pure in heart, and with their hair unbound, and prayed to Jupiter
for rain! And it would pour down in bucketfuls then or never, and they'd
all come home, wet as drowned rats. But the gods all have the gout now,
because we are not religious; and so our fields are burning up!"

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.

"Don't be so down in the mouth," chimed in Echion, the ragman; "if it
wasn't that it'd be something else, as the farmer said, when he lost his
spotted pig. If a thing don't happen today, it may tomorrow. That's the
way life jogs along. You couldn't name a better country, by Hercules,
you couldn't, if only the men had any brains. She's in hot water right
now, but she ain't the only one. We oughtn't to be so particular;
heaven's as far away everywhere else. If you were somewhere else, you'd
swear that pigs walked around here already roasted. Think of what's
coming! We'll soon have a fine gladiator show to last for three days, no
training-school pupils; most of them will be freedmen. Our Titus has a
hot head and plenty of guts and it will go to a finish. I'm well
acquainted with him, and he'll not stand for any frame-ups. It will be
cold steel in the best style