"To try your luck with Xanthe? I tell you, it's trouble wasted, for
she's dressing her hair to receive our guest from Messina; and, if she
were standing where those cabbage-leaves be, she wouldn't contradict me
if I were to repeat what you heard from my lips this morning at sunrise.
Our girl will never become Phaon's wife until I myself offer a sacrifice
to Aphrodite, that she may fill Xanthe's heart with love for him."

Jason shrugged his shoulders, and was preparing to turn his back on the
old woman, when Dorippe entered and approached the hearth. Her eyes were
red with weeping, and in her arms she carried a round, yellowish-white
creature that, struggling and stretching it's little legs in the air,
squealed in a clear, shrill voice, even more loudly and piteously than a
hungry babe.

It was a pretty, well-fattened sucking pig.

Jason looked at it significantly, but Semestre snatched it out of the
girl's arms, pressed it to her own bosom, turned her back upon the old
man with resolute meaning, and said, just loud enough for him alone to
hear:

"A roast for the banquet."

As soon as Jason had left the room, she put the nicely-washed pig on a
little wooden bench, ordered Chloris to see that it did not soil itself;
drew from a small box, standing beside the loom, one blue ribbon and two
red ones; tied the former carefully around the little creature's curly
tail, and the latter about its cars; lifted the pig again, looked at it
as a mother gazes at her prettily-dressed darling, patted its fattest
parts with her right-hand, and ordered Dorippe to carry it to Aphrodite's