d I
had heard no noise.

I rushed to the house-door, found it ajar and, each sleeping in his cell,
on the one side the snoring janitor, on the other our fat, pursy, overfed
watchdog.

I omit my hasty measures for pursuing the thieves and attempting their
capture or at least the recovery of their booty; and my urgent and
important efforts to arrange that our guests should be properly received
and the dinner should not be spoiled. Towards this last I did what could
be done and with fair success, Falco playing up to my suggestions and
dissimulating his chagrin.

More important to record was his amazing indifference to his loss. Not
that he did not feel it acutely, but that he seemed to feel no proper
indignation against those at fault.

He questioned the janitor and all the slaves concerned, but instead of
ordering scourged the two servitors whom I had left in the _triclinium_
when I went out of it to visit the kitchen and who should have remained
there until my return, he merely reprimanded them mildly. He did not so
much as have the undutiful janitor flogged, let alone sent away for sale.
He even laughed at the luck, alertness, dexterity and swiftness of the
thieves; picturing their glance into the unshut door, their glances up and
down the street, their eyeings of the watchdog and janitor, their
noiseless dash into the atrium, their invasion of the _triclinium_, their
gathering of the smaller pieces into the four handled wine-mixers, and
their escape, each with two silver pails stuffed with goblets, salt-
cellars, and bowls and, brimming with strainers, spoons and other small
pieces.

He commented on their luck in not encountering any of his approaching
guests.

"Mercury," he said, "to whom you chiefly pray, must have been good to
them, as his votaries."

I was horrified at the levity of his attitude of mind. When we were alone
I remonstrated with him, saying that such leniency was certain to
demoralize his household; would ruin any set of slaves. I told him that
his retention of the janitor after Agathemer's unnoticed entrance on the
first day of the year was bad enough, far worse was it to condone a second
lapse, and that having had consequences so serious. I expostulated that it
was madness to entrust his housedoor to a watchman already twice caught
asleep at his post. I reminded him of the cash value of his gem-collection
and of its value in his eyes, not to be reckoned in cash. He listened
indulgently and