This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round the table of citrean wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed the three couches, which were yet more common at Pompeii than the semicircular seat that had grown lately into fashion at Rome: and on these couches of bronze, studded with richer metals, were laid thick quiltings covered with elaborate broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the pressure.
'Well, I must own,' said the aedile Pansa, 'that your house, though scarcely larger than a case for one's fibulae, is a gem of its kind. How beautifully painted is that parting of Achilles and Briseis!--what a style!--what heads!--what a-hem!'
'Praise from Pansa is indeed valuable on such subjects,' said Clodius, gravely. 'Why, the paintings on his walls!--Ah! there is, indeed, the hand of a Zeuxis!'
'You flatter me, my Clodius; indeed you do,' quoth the aedile, who was celebrated through Pompeii for having the worst paintings in the world; for he was patriotic, and patronized none but Pompeians. 'You flatter me; but there is something pretty--AEdepol, yes--in the colors, to say nothing of the design--and then for the kitchen, my friends--ah! that was all my fancy.'
'What is the design?' said Glaucus. 'I have not yet seen your kitchen, though I have often witnessed the excellence of its cheer.'
'A cook, my Athenian--a cook sacrificing the trophies of his skill on the altar of Vesta, with a beautiful muraena (taken from the life) on a spit at a distance--there is some invention there!'
At that instant the slaves appeared, bearing a tray covered with the first preparative initia of the feast. Amidst delicious figs, fresh herbs strewed with snow, anchovies, and eggs, were ranged small cups of diluted wine sparingly mixed with honey. As these were placed on the table, young slaves bore round to each of the five guests (for there were no more) the silver basin of perfumed water, and napkins edged with a purple fringe. But the aedile ostentatiously drew forth his own napkin, which was not, indeed, of so fine a linen, but in which the fringe was twice as broad, and wiped his hands with the parade of a man who felt he was calling for admiration.
'A splendid nappa that of yours,' said Clodius; 'why, the fringe is as broad as a girdle!'
'A trifle, my Clodius: a trifle! They tell me this stripe is the latest fashion at Rome; but Glaucus attends to these things more than I.'
'Be propitious, O Bacchus!' said Glaucus, inclining reverentially to a beautiful image of the god placed in the centre of the table, at the corners of which stood the Lares and the salt-holders. The guests followed the prayer, and then, sprinkling the wine on the table, they performed the wonted libation.
This over, the convivialists reclined themselves on the couches, and the business of the hour commenced.
'May this cup be my last!' said the young Sallust, as the table, cleared of its first stimulants, was now loaded with the substantial part of the entertainment, and the ministering slave poured forth to him a brimming cyathus--'May this cup be my last, but it is the best wine I have drunk at Pompeii!'
'Bring hither the amphora,' said Glaucus, 'and read its date and its character.'
The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fastened to the cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age a ripe fifty years.
'How deliciously the snow has cooled it!' said Pansa. 'It is just enough.'
'It is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleasures sufficiently to give them a double zest,' exclaimed Sallust.
'It is like a woman's "No",' added Glaucus: 'it cools, but to inflame the more.'
'When is our next wild-beast fight?' said Clodius to Pansa.
'It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August,' answered Pansa: 'on the day after the Vulcanalia--we have a most lovely young lion for the occasion.'
'Whom shall we get for him to eat?' asked Clodius. 'Alas! there is a great scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or other to condemn to the lion, Pansa!'
'Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late,' replied the aedile, gravely. 'It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our own slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like with our own, that's what I call an infringement on property itself.'
'Not so in the good old days of the Republic,' sighed Sallust.
'And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment to the poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between a man and a lion; and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don't send us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law!'
'What can be worse policy,' said Clodius, sententiously, 'than to interfere with the manly amusements of the people?'
'Well thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present,' said Sallust.
'He was, indeed, a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years.'
'I wonder it did not create a rebellion,' said Sallust.
'It very nearly did,' returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar.
Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish.
'Ah, what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?' cried the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.
Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like eating--perhaps he had exhausted all the others: yet had he some talent, and an excellent heart--as far as it went.
'I know its face, by Pollux!' cried Pansa. 'It is an Ambracian Kid. Ho (snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves) we must prepare a new libation in honour to the new-comer.'
'I had hoped said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, 'to have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to Caesar have forbid us the oysters.'
'Are they in truth so delicious?' asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic.
