When Trimalchio perceived we look’d somewhat awkwardly on such course fare, “Come, come,” said he, “fall to and eat, this is the custom of the place.”

Nor had he sooner said it, than the fourth consort struck up; at which the waiters fell a dancing, and took off the upper part of the charger, under which was a dish of cramm’d fowl, and the hinder paps of a sow that had farrowed but a day before, well powdered, and the middle a hare, stuck in with finns of fish in his side, that he look’d like a flying horse; and on the sides of the fish four little images, that spouted a relishing sauce on some fish that lay near them, all of them brought from the river Euripus.

We also seconded the shout begun by the family, and fell merrily aboard this; and Trimalchio no less pleas’d than our selves, cryed “Cut”; at which the musick sounding again, the carver humour’d it, and cut up the meat with such antick postures, you’d have thought him a carman fighting to an organ.

Nevertheless Trimalchio in a lower note, cryed out again “Cut:”  I hearing the word so often repeated, suspecting there might be some joke in it, was not ashamed to ask him that sate next above me, what it meant?  And he that had been often present at the like, “You see,” said he, “him that carves about, his name is cutter; and as often as he says ‘Cut,’ he both calls and commands.”

The humour spoiled my stomach for eating; but turning to him that I might learn more, I made some pleasant discourse to him at a distance; and at last asked him what that woman was that so often scutled up and down the room.

“It is,” said he, “Trimalchio’s wife, her name Fortunata, she measures money by the bushel; but what was she not long since?  Pardon me sir, you would not have touch’d her with a pair of tongs, but now, no one knows how, or wherefore she’s got into heaven; and is Trimalchio’s all in all:  In short, if she says it is mid-night at mid-day, he’ll believe her.  He’s so very wealthy, he knows not what he has; but she has an eye every where; and when you least think to meet her:  She’s void of all good counsel, and withal of all ill tongue; a very pye at his bolster; whom she loves she loves; and whom she does not love, she does not love.

“Then for Trimalchio, he has more lands than a crow can fly over; monies upon monies:  There lies more silver in his porters lodge, than any one man’s whole estate.  And for his family, hey-day, hey-day, there is not (so help me Hercules) one tenth of them that know their master.  In brief, there is not one of those fools about him, but he can turn him into a cabbage-stalk.  Nor is there any occasion to buy any thing, he has all at his own door; wooll, marte, pepper, nay hens milk; do but beat about and you’ll find it.  In a word, time was, his wooll was none of the best, and therefore he bought rams at Tarentum to mend this breed; an in like manner he did by his honey, by bringing his bees from Athens.  It is not long since but