g then
to approach you two, my children, I stood up, an object of terror--aye,
terror. For a moment a circle of fear surrounded the Gallic slave, with
his load of irons.

"Father! Father!" you cried again, stretching out your little arms, in
spite of the keepers who held you back. I made a bound toward you, but
the merchant, from the top of the cage where you had been confined,
suddenly threw a large piece of cloth over my head. At the same time I
was seized by the legs, thrown down, and tied with a thousand bonds. The
cloth, which covered my head and shoulders, was tied down around my
neck, and through it they made a gap, which unfortunately permitted me
to breathe--I had hoped to smother.

I felt myself being carried across to my own booth, where I was thrown
on the straw, incapable of making the slightest motion. Quite a while
later I heard the centurion, my new master, in a sharp altercation with
the "horse-dealer" and the merchant who had sold Syomara to Trymalcion.
Presently they all went out. Silence reigned around me. Some time later,
the dealer returned; he approached me; he kicked me angrily; he tore off
the cover from my face, and said to me in a voice trembling with rage:

"Scoundrel! Do you know what it has cost me, that mouthful of flesh you
tore out of the face of the noble Trymalcion? Do you know, ferocious
beast? That mouthful of flesh cost me twenty sous of gold! More than
half of what I sold you for, for I am responsible for your misdeeds,
wretch! while you are in my stall, double villain! So that it is I who
have made a present of your daughter to the old man. She was sold to him
for twenty gold sous, which I paid in his stead. He insisted upon it.
And even so I got off cheaply. He demanded that indemnity."[33]

"That monster is not dead! Hena! he is not dead!" I cried in despair.
"And my daughter is not dead either! Hesus, Teutates, take pity on my
daughter!"

"Your daughter, gallows bird! Your daughter is in Trymalcion's hands,
and it is upon her he will wreak his revenge on you. He rejoices over
the circumstance in advance. He sometimes is taken with savage caprices,
and is rich enough to indulge them."

I was unable to make answer to these words, save with long drawn out
moans.

"And that is not all, infamous scoundrel! I have lost the confidence of
the centurion to whom I sold you. He reproached me with having
outrageously deceived him; with having sold him, instead of a lamb, a
tiger w