I observed also in the same place a troop of light-horsemen, with their commander exercising them, as also a large armory, in one of the angles of which stood a shrine with the gods of the house in silver, a marble statue of Venus, and a large golden box, in which it was said he kept the first shavings of his beard.  Then asking the servant that had the charge of these things, what pictures those were in the middle?  The Iliads and the Odysses, said he, and on the left-hand two spectacles of sword-playing.  We could not bestow much time on it, for by this time we were coming to the dining-room, in the entry of which sate his steward, taking every one’s account:  But what I most admir’d, were those bundles of rods, with their axes, that were fastned to the sides of the door, and stood, as it were, on the brazen prow of a ship, on which was written,

TO CAIUS POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO OF PRAETORIAN DIGNITY; CINNAMUS THE STEWARD.

Under the same title also, hung a lamp of two lights from the roof of the room, and two tablets on either side of the door; of which one, if I well remember, had this inscription,

THE THIRD AND SECOND OF THE KALENDS OF JANUARY, OUR PATRON CAIUS EATS ABROAD.

On the other was represented the course of the moon, and the seven stars; and what days were lucky, what unlucky, with an emboss’d studd to distinguish the one from the other.

Full of this sensuality we were now entring the room, where one of his boys, set there for that purpose, call’d aloud to us, “ADVANCE ORDERLY.”  Nor is it to be doubted, but we were somewhat concern’d for fear of breaking the orders of the place.  But while we were footing it accordingly, a servant stript off his livery, fell at our feet, and besought us to save him a whipping; for he said his fault was no great matter, but that some cloaths of the stewards had been stolen from him in the bath, and all of them not worth eighteen-pence.

We returned therefore in good order, and finding the steward in the counting-house telling some gold, besought him to remit the servant’s punishment:  When putting on an haughty face, “It is not,” said he, “the loss of the thing troubles me, but the negligence of a careless rascal.  He has lost me the garments I sate at table in, and which a client of mine presented me on my birth-day:  no man can deny them to be right purple, tho’ not double dye; yet whatever it be, I grant your request.”

Having receiv’d so great a favour, as we were entring the dining-room, the servant for whom we had been suitors, met us, and kissing us, who stood wondring what the humour meant, over and over gave us thanks for our civility; and in short told us we should know by and by, whom it was we had oblig’d:  The wine which our master keeps for his own drinking, is the waiters kindness.

At length we sate down, when a bigger and sprucer sort of boys coming about us, some of them poured snow-water on our heads, and others par’d the nails of our feet, with a mighty dexterity, and that not silently, but singing as it were by the bye:  I resolved to try if the whole family sang; and therefore called for drink, which one of the boys a readily brought me with an odd kind of tune; and the same did every one as you asked for any thing:  You’d have taken it for a Morris dancers hall, not the table of a person of quality.