'Cast your hopes to the court at Ravenna, and your beasts' provender to
the howling mob!' cried Vetranio with sudden energy. 'It is now too
late to yield; if the next few days bring us no assistance, the city
will be a human shambles! And think you that I, who have already lost
in this public suspension of social joys my pleasures, my employments,
and my companions, will wait serenely for the lingering and ignoble
death that must then threaten us all? No, it shall never be said that I
died starving with the herd, like a slave that his master deserts!
Though the plates in my banqueting hall must now be empty, my vases and
wine-cups shall yet sparkle for my guests! There is still wine in the
cellar, and spices and perfumes remain in the larder stores! I will
invite my friends to a last feast; a saturnalia in a city of famine; a
banquet of death, spread by the jovial labours of Silenus and his fauns!
Though the Parcae have woven for me the destiny of a dog, it is the hand
of Bacchus that shall sever the fatal thread!'

His cheeks were flushed, his eyes sparkled; all the mad energy of his
determination appeared in his face as he spoke. He was no longer the
light, amiable, smooth-tongued trifler, but a moody, reckless, desperate
man, careless of every obligation and pursuit which had hitherto
influenced the easy surface of his patrician life. The startled
Camilla, who had as yet preserved a melancholy silence, ran towards him
with affrighted looks and undissembled tears. Carrio stared in vacant
astonishment on his master's disordered countenance; and, forgetting his
bundle of dogskins, suffered them to drop unheeded on the floor. A
momentary silence followed, which was suddenly interrupted by the abrupt
entrance of a fourth person, pale, trembling and breathless, who was no
other than Vetranio's former visitor, the Prefect Pompeianus.

'I bid you welcome to my approaching feast of brimming wine-cups and