was waiting. When he saw them, he made a low bow. A smile came to the
lips of Petronius at thought of his suspicion of yesterday, that this
man might be Eunice's lover. The man who was standing before him could
not be any one's lover. In that marvellous figure there was something
both foul and ridiculous. He was not old; in his dirty beard and curly
locks a gray hair shone here and there. He had a lank stomach and
stooping shoulders, so that at the first cast of the eye he appeared to
be hunchbacked; above that hump rose a large head, with the face of a
monkey and also of a fox; the eye was penetrating. His yellowish
complexion was varied with pimples; and his nose, covered with them
completely, might indicate too great a love for the bottle. His
neglected apparel, composed of a dark tunic of goat's wool and a mantle
of similar material with holes in it, showed real or simulated poverty.
At sight of him, Homer's Thersites came to the mind of Petronius.
Hence, answering with a wave of the hand to his bow, he said,--

"A greeting, divine Thersites! How are the lumps which Ulysses gave
thee at Troy, and what is he doing himself in the Elysian Fields?"

"Noble lord," answered Chilo Chilonides, "Ulysses, the wisest of the
dead, sends a greeting through me to Petronius, the wisest of the
living, and the request to cover my lumps with a new mantle."

"By Hecate Triformis!" exclaimed Petronius, "the answer deserves a new
mantle."

But further conversation was interrupted by the impatient Vinicius, who
inquired directly,--"Dost thou know clearly what thou art undertaking?"

"When two households in two lordly mansions speak of naught else, and