nd shoulders.
While this was going on, the merchant was holding you back, my son, and
I--the father of the two victims--I, loaded with chains, beheld the
spectacle. At the sight of this crime of the patrician Trymalcion,
outraging the chastity of a child, the three fettered Gallic women and
the matron made a desperate but vain effort to break from their irons,
and began to pour out a torrent of imprecations and groans.

Trymalcion finished complacently his disgusting examination, and said a
few words to the merchant. Immediately a keeper replaced the robe on my
girl, who was more dead than alive, wrapped her up in her long white
veil, which he tied around her, and taking the slender burden under his
arm, held himself in readiness to follow the old man, who was taking
some gold from his purse to pay the merchant. At that moment of supreme
despair--you and your sister, poor little ones bewildered with terror,
cried out as if you believed you would be heard and succored:

"Mother! Father!"

Up to that moment I had witnessed the scene panting, almost crazy with
grief and rage. Slowly my heart, struggling against the sorcery of the
"horse-dealer," was gaining the upper hand. But at that cry, uttered by
you and your sister, the charm broke with a clap. All my intelligence,
all my courage rushed back to me. The sight of you two gave me such a
shock, it threw me into such a transport of rage that, unable to break
my irons, I rose upon my feet, and, with my hands still pinioned behind
me, my legs still loaded with heavy chains, I bounded out of my stall
with two leaps, and fell like a thunderbolt upon the old patrician. The
shock caused the old man to roll under me. In default of the liberty of
my hands to strangle him, I bit him in the face, near the neck. The
"horse-dealers" and their keepers threw themselves upon me; but bearing
with all my weight upon the hideous old debauchee, who was howling at
the top of his voice, I kept my teeth in his flesh. The monster's blood
filled my mouth--a shower of whip lashes and blows from sticks and
stones rained upon me--yet I budged not. No more than our old war dog
Deber-Trud the man-eater did I drop my prey.--No!--Like the dog, when I
did let go, it was only to carry away between my teeth--a strip of
flesh, a bleeding mouthful that I spat back into Trymalcion's hideous,
tortured face, as he had spat at the Gallic women.

"Father! Father!" you cried out to me through the tumult. Wishin