Beetle raised his head from his shaking arm long enough to answer:  ‘Ruins, sir.’

There was an impressive pause while King checked off crimes on his fingers.  Then to Beetle the much-enduring man addressed winged words: 

‘Guessing,’ said he.  ’Guessing, Beetle, as usual, from the look of delubris that it bore some relation to diluvium or deluge, you imparted the result of your half-baked lucubrations to Winton who seems to have been lost enough to have accepted it.  Observing next, your companion’s fall, from the presumed security of your undistinguished position in the rear-guard, you took another pot-shot.  The turbid chaos of your mind threw up some memory of the word “dilapidations” which you have pitifully attempted to disguise under the synonym of “ruins."’

As this was precisely what Beetle had done he looked hurt but forgiving.  ‘We will attend to this later,’ said King.  ’Go on, Winton, and retrieve yourself.’

Delubris happened to be the one word which Winton had not looked out and had asked Beetle for, when they were settling into their places.  He forged ahead with no further trouble.  Only when he rendered scilicet as ‘forsooth,’ King erupted.

‘Regulus,’ he said, ’was not a leader-writer for the penny press, nor, for that matter, was Horace.  Regulus says:  “The soldier ransomed by gold will come keener for the fight—­will he by—­by gum!” That’s the meaning of scilicet.  It indicates contempt—­bitter contempt.  “Forsooth,” forsooth!  You’ll be talking about “speckled beauties” and “eventually transpire” next.  Howell, what do you make of that doubled “Vidi ego—­ego vidi”?  It wasn’t put in to fill up the metre, you know.’

‘Isn’t it intensive, sir?’ said Howell, afflicted by a genuine interest in what he read.  ’Regulus was a bit in earnest about Rome making no terms with Carthage—­and he wanted to let the Romans understand it, didn’t he, sir?’

’Less than your usual grace, but the fact.  Regulus was in earnest.  He was also engaged at the same time in cutting his own throat with every word he uttered.  He knew Carthage which (your examiners won’t ask you this so you needn’t take notes) was a sort of God-forsaken nigger Manchester.  Regulus was not thinking about his own life.  He was telling Rome the truth.  He was playing for his side.  Those lines from the eighteenth to the fortieth ought to be written in blood.  Yet there are things in human garments which will tell you that Horace was a flaneur—­a man about town.  Avoid such beings.  Horace knew a very great deal. He knew! Erit ille fortis—­“will he be brave who once to faithless foes has knelt?” And again (stop pawing with your hooves, Thornton!) hic unde vitam sumeret inscius.  That means roughly—­but I perceive I am ahead of my translators.  Begin at hic unde, Vernon, and let us see if you have the spirit of Regulus.’