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.

'Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavor; they
want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But, at Rome, no supper is
complete without them.'

'The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all,' said Sallust.
'They produce an oyster.'

'I wish they would produce us a gladiator,' said the aedile, whose
provident mind was musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.

'By Pallas!' cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his streaming
locks with a new chaplet, 'I love these wild spectacles well enough when
beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours,
is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too