rses--just the
contrary--a list of my debts for wine and horses."

"Well," observed Cethegus, "I have taken it--so it and they are
mine. To-morrow you may fetch the quittance at my house; but not for
nothing--for one of your most spiteful epigrams upon my pious friend
Silverius."

"Oh, Cethegus!" cried the poet, delighted and flattered, "how spiteful
one can be for 40,000 solidi! Woe to the holy man of God!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"And the dessert--how far have you got there?" asked Cethegus, "already
at the apples? are these they?" and he looked, screwing up his eyes, at
two heaped-up fruit-baskets, which stood upon a bronze table with ivory
legs.

"Ha, victory!" laughed Marcus Licinius, Lucius's younger brother, who
amused himself with the then fashionable pastime of modelling in wax.
"There! you see my art, Kallistratos! The Prefect thinks that my waxen
apples, which I gave you yesterday, are real."

"Ah, indeed!" cried Cethegus, as if astonished, although he had long
since noticed the smell of the wax with dislike. "Yes, art deceives the
most acute. With whom did you learn? I should like to put similar
ornaments in my Kyzikenian hall."

"I am an autodidact," said Marcus proudly, "and to-morrow I will send
you my new Persian apples--for you honour art."

"But is the sitting at an end?" asked the Prefect, resting his left arm
on the cushions of the triclinium.

"No," cried the host, "I will confess the truth. As I could not reckon
upon the king of our feast until the dessert, I have prepared a little
after-feast to be taken with the wine."

"Oh, you sinner!" cried Balbus, wiping his greasy lips upon the rough
purple Turkish table-cover, "and I have eaten such a terrible quantity
of your _becca-ficchi_!"

"It is against the agreement!" cried Marcus Licinius.

"It will spoil my manners," said the merry Piso gravely.

"Say, is that Hellenic simplicity?" asked Lucius Licinius.

"Peace, friends!" and Cethegus comforted them with a quotation: "'E'en
unexpected hurt, a Roman bears unmoved.'"

"The Hellenic host must adjust himself according to his guests," said
Kallistratos, excusing himself. "I feared you would not come again if I
offered you Marathonian fare."

"Well, at least confess with what you menace us," cried Cethegus.
"Thou, Nomenclator! read the bill of fare. I will then decide upon the
suitable wines."

The slave--a handsome Lydian boy, dressed in a garment of blue