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‘See those fellows!’ cried one; ‘they are the waiters at our feast, and they mock us to our faces! Down with the filthy kitchen thieves!’

‘Excellently well said, Davus!—but who is to approach them? They stink at this distance!’

‘The rotten-bodied knaves have the noses of dogs and the carcases of goats.’

Then came a chorus of voices—‘Down with them! Down with them!’ In the midst of which an indignant freedman advanced to rebuke the mob, receiving, as the reward of his temerity, a shower of missiles and a volley of curses; after which he was thus addressed by a huge, greasy butcher, hoisted on his companions’ shoulders:—

‘By the soul of the emperor, could I get near you, you rogue, I would quarter you with my fingers alone!—A grinning scoundrel that jeers at others! A filthy flatterer that dirts the very ground he walks on! By the blood of the martyrs, should I fling the sweepings of the slaughter- house at him, he knows not where to get himself dried!’

‘Thou rag of a man,’ roared a neighbour of the indignant butcher’s, ‘dost thou frown upon the guests of thy master, the very scrapings of whose skin are worth more than thy whole carcase! It is easier to make a drinking-vessel of the skull of a flea than to make an honest man of such a villainous night-walker as thou art!’