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'What, Reburrus! he cried, 'are you already drunken to insanity, that you call the first dead body which by chance I encountered in the street, and by chance brought hither, your mother? Was it to talk of your mother, whom dead or alive we neither know nor care for, that you were admitted here?
What marvels has it not effected, borne before us by the frantic Reburrus, as a banner of the hosts of death, against the cowardly slaves whose fit inheritance is oppression, and whose sole sensation is fear! See, we are free to continue and conclude the banquet as we had designed! The gods themselves have interfered to raise us in security above our fellow-mortals, whom we despise!
They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames, and curiously select or invent the most lofty and sonorous appellations Reburrus or Fabunius, Pagonius or Tarrasius which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect.
'Our miracle of beauty and boy-god of melody has departed before us to the Elysian fields! muttered the hunchback Reburrus, in harsh, sarcastic accents. Then, during the short silence that ensued, the voices from the street, joined on this occasion to a noise of approaching footsteps on the pavement, became again distinctly audible in the banqueting-hall.
It was an embodiment of a sorcerer's vision an apocalypse of sin triumphing over the world's last relics of mortality in the vaults of death. 'To your task, Reburrus! cried Vetranio, when the tumult was lulled; 'to your questions without delay! Behold the teacher with whom you are to hold commune!
By my side, on this parchment, lies the formulary of questions to be addressed by Reburrus, when the curtain is withdrawn, to the Oracle of the Mysteries of other Spheres. 'Before you, behold in those vases all that remains of my once well-stocked cellars, and all that is provided for the palates of my guests!
They contend with each other in the empty vanity of titles and surnames; and curiously select, or invent, the most lofty and sonorous appellations, Reburrus, or Fabunius, Pagonius, or Tarasius, which may impress the ears of the vulgar with astonishment and respect.
They had observed the sinister and sarcastic expression of Vetranio's eye as he spoke of his concealed guest; they knew that the hunchback Reburrus possessed, among his other powers of buffoonery, the art of ventriloquism; and they suspected the presence of some hideous or grotesque image of a heathen god or demon in the hidden recess, which the jugglery of the parasite was to gift with the capacity of speech.
'Thou, too, facetious hunchback, prince of parasites, unscrupulous Reburrus, where, but at this banquet of famine, will thy buffoonery now procure for thee a draught of reviving wine? Thy masters have abandoned thee to thy native dunghill! No more shalt thou wheedle for them when they borrow, or bully for them when they pay!
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