o his puny frame, which looked doubly contemptible,
enveloped as it was in an ample tawdry robe. Sprung from the lowest
ranks of the populace, he had gradually forced himself into the favour
of his superiors by his skill in coarse mimicry, and his readiness in
ministering to the worst vices of all who would employ him. Having
lost the greater part of his patrons during the siege, finding himself
abandoned to starvation on all sides, he had now, as a last resource,
obtained permission to participate in the Banquet of Famine, to enliven
it by a final exhibition of his buffoonery, and to die with his
masters, as he had lived with them--the slave, the parasite, and the
imitator of the lowest of their vices and the worst of their crimes.

At the commencement of the orgie, little was audible beyond the clash
of the wine-cups, the low occasional whispering of the revellers, and
the confused voices of the people without, floating through the window
from the street. The desperate compact of the guests, now that its
execution had actually begun, awed them at first in spite of
themselves. At length, when there was a lull of all sounds--when a
temporary calm prevailed over the noises outside--when the wine-cups
were emptied, and left for a moment ere they were filled
again--Vetranio feebly rose, and, announcing with a mocking smile that
he was about to speak a funeral oration over his friends and himself,
pointed to the wall immediately behind him as to an object fitted to
awaken the astonishment or the hilarity of his moody guests.

Against the upper part of the wall were fixed various small statues in
bronze and marble, all representing the owner of the palace, and all
hung with golden plates. Beneath these appeared the rent-roll of his
estates, written in various colours on white vellum, and beneath that,
scratched on the marble in faint irregular characters, was no less an
object than his own epitaph, composed by himself. It may be translated
thus:--

Stop, Spectator!
If thou has reverently cultivated the pleasures of the taste,
pause amid these illustrious ruins of what was once
a palace,
and peruse with respect on this stone
the epitaph of VETRANIO, a senator.
He was the first man who invented a successful
nightingale sauce;
his bold and creative genius added much,
and would have added more, to
THE ART OF COOKERY;
but, alas for the interests of science!