Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 1.djvu/261

CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH. “Habinnas, you were there, I think, I’ll leave it to you; didn’t he say—‘You took your wife out of a whore-house’? you’re as lucky in your friends, too, no one ever repays your favor with another, you own broad estates, you nourish a viper under your wing, and—why shouldn’t I tell it—I still have thirty years, four months, and two days to live! I’ll also come into another bequest shortly. That’s what my horoscope tells me. If I can extend my boundaries so as to join Apulia, I’ll think I’ve amounted to something in this life! I built this house with Mercury on the job, anyhow; it was a hovel, as you know, it’s a palace now! Four dining-rooms, twenty bed-rooms, two marble colonnades, a store-room upstairs, a bed-room where I sleep myself, a sitting-room for this viper, a very good room for the porter, a guest-chamber for visitors. As a matter of fact, Scaurus, when he was here, would stay nowhere else, although he has a family place