"But why isn't Fortunata at the table, Gaius? Tell me." "What's that,"
Trimalchio replied; "don't you know her better than that? She wouldn't
touch even a drop of water till after the silver was put away and the
leftovers divided among the slaves." "I'm going to beat it if she don't
take her place," Habinnas threatened, and started to get up; and then,
at a signal, the slaves all called out together "Fortunata," four times
or more.
She appeared, girded round with a sash of greenish yellow, below which a
cherry-colored tunic could be seen, and she had on twisted anklets and
sandals worked in gold. Then, wiping her hands upon a handkerchief which
she wore around her neck, she seated herself upon the couch, beside
Scintilla, Habinnas' wife, and clapping her hands and kissing her, "My
dear," she gushed, "is it really you?" Fortunata then removed the
bracelets from her pudgy arms and held them out to the admiring
Scintilla, and by and by she took off her anklets and even her yellow
hair-net, which was twenty-four carats fine, she would have us know!
Trimalchio, who was on the watch, ordered every trinket to be brought to
him. "You see these things, don't you?" he demanded; "they're what
women fetter us with. That's the way us poor suckers are done! These
ought to weigh six pounds and a half. I have an arm-band myself, that
don't weigh a grain under ten pounds; I bought it out of Mercury's
thousandths, too." Finally, for fear he would seem to be lying, he
ordered the scales to be brought in and carried around to prove the
weights. And Scintilla was no better. She took off a small golden
vanity case which she wore around her neck, and which she called her
Lucky Box, and took from it two eardrops, which, in her turn, she handed
to Fortunata to be inspected. "Thanks to the generosity of my husband,"
she smirked, "no woman has better." "What's that?" Habinnas demanded.
"You kept on my trail to buy that glass bean for you; if I had a
daughter, I'll be damned if I wouldn't cut off her little ears. We'd
have everything as cheap as dirt if there were no women, but we have to
piss hot and drink cold, the way things are now." The women, angry
though they were, were laughing together, in the meantime, and exchanging
drunken kisses, the one running on about her diligence as a housekeeper,
and the other about the infidelities and neglect of her husband.
Habinnas got up stealthily, while they were clinging together in this
fashion and, seizing Fortunata by the feet, he tipped her over backwards
upon the couch. "Let go!" she screeched, as her tunic slipped above her
knees; then, after pulling down her clothing, she threw herself into
Scintilla's lap, and hid, with her handkerchief, a face which was none
the more beautiful for its blushes.