Across the small kitchen flitted many forms which the quick eye of the master did not recognize.

‘Oh! oh!’ grumbled he to himself, ’that cursed Congrio hath invited a whole legion of cooks to assist him.  They won’t serve for nothing, and this is another item in the total of my day’s expenses.  By Bacchus! thrice lucky shall I be if the slaves do not help themselves to some of the drinking vessels:  ready, alas, are their hands, capacious are their tunics.  Me miserum!’

The cooks, however, worked on, seemingly heedless of the apparition of Diomed.

’Ho, Euclio, your egg-pan!  What, is this the largest? it only holds thirty-three eggs:  in the houses I usually serve, the smallest egg-pan holds fifty, if need be!’

‘The unconscionable rogue!’ thought Diomed; ’he talks of eggs as if they were a sesterce a hundred!’

‘By Mercury!’ cried a pert little culinary disciple, scarce in his novitiate; ’whoever saw such antique sweetmeat shapes as these?—­It is impossible to do credit to one’s art with such rude materials.  Why, Sallust’s commonest sweetmeat shape represents the whole siege of Troy; Hector and Paris, and Helen... with little Astyanax and the Wooden Horse into the bargain!’

‘Silence, fool!’ said Congrio, the cook of the house, who seemed to leave the chief part of the battle to his allies.  ’My master, Diomed, is not one of those expensive good-for-noughts, who must have the last fashion, cost what it will!’

‘Thou liest, base slave!’ cried Diomed, in a great passion—­and thou costest me already enough to have ruined Lucullus himself!  Come out of thy den, I want to talk to thee.’

The slave, with a sly wink at his confederates, obeyed the command.

‘Man of three letters,’ said Diomed, with his face of solemn anger, ’how didst thou dare to invite all those rascals into my house?—­I see thief written in every line of their faces.’

’Yet, I assure you, master, that they are men of most respectable character—­the best cooks of the place; it is a great favor to get them.  But for my sake...’

‘Thy sake, unhappy Congrio!’ interrupted Diomed; and by what purloined moneys of mine, by what reserved filchings from marketing, by what goodly meats converted into grease, and sold in the suburbs, by what false charges for bronzes marred, and earthenware broken—­hast thou been enabled to make them serve thee for thy sake?’

‘Nay, master, do not impeach my honesty!  May the gods desert me if...’

‘Swear not!’ again interrupted the choleric Diomed, ’for then the gods will smite thee for a perjurer, and I shall lose my cook on the eve of dinner.  But, enough of this at present:  keep a sharp eye on thy ill-favored assistants, and tell me no tales to-morrow of vases broken, and cups miraculously vanished, or thy whole back shall be one pain.  And hark thee! thou knowest thou hast made me pay for those Phrygian attagens enough, by Hercules, to have