First Servant.
Come, come, another made of the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. ’Twill be to the beetle’s taste; he likes it well ground.[1]
Second Servant.
There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.
First Servant.
Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.
Second Servant.
I’ faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.
First Servant.
Pitch it down the sewer sooncr, and yourself with it.
Second Servant.
Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won’t eat unless I offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day. . . . But let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. Has he done eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a ropemaker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodité nor the Graces.
First Servant.
Who was it then?
- ↑ An obscene allusion, the fæces of catamites being ‘well ground’ from the treatment they are in the habit of submitting to.
