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[65]
After this display of kindness, some savouries were
brought in, the memory of which, as sure as I tell you this story, still makes me
shudder. For instead of a thrush a fat chicken was brought round to each of us, and
goose-eggs in caps, which Trimalchio kept asking us to eat with the utmost
insistence, saying that they were chickens without the bones. Meanwhile a priest's
attendant1 knocked
at the diningroom door, and a man dressed in white for some festivity came in with a
number of others. I was frightened by his solemn looks, and thought the mayor had
arrived. So I tried to get up and plant my bare feet on the ground. Agamemnon
laughed at my anxiety and said, “Control yourself, you silly fool! It is
Habinnas of the priests' college, a monumental mason with a reputation for
making first-class tombstones.” I was relieved by this news, and lay down
in my place again, and watched Habinnas' entrance with great astonishment. He was
quite drunk, and had put his hands on his wife's shoulders; he had several wreaths
on, and ointment was running down his forehead into his eyes. He sat down in the[p. 125] chief magistrate's place,2 and at once called for wine and hot water. Trimalchio was delighted at
his good humour, and demanded a larger cup for himself, and asked him how he had
been received. “We had everything there except you,” was the reply,
“for my eyes were here with you. Yes, it was really splendid. Scissa was
having a funeral feast on the ninth day for her poor dear slave, whom she set
free on his deathbed. And I believe she will have an enormous sum to pay the
tax-collector, for they reckon that the dead man was worth fifty
thousand.3 But anyhow it was a pleasant affair, even if we did have
to pour half our drinks over his lamented bones.”
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