Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/166

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Come, come, another made of the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. ’Twill be to the beetle’s taste; he likes it well ground.

There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.

Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.

I’ faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.

Pitch it down the sewer sooncr, and yourself with it.

Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won’t eat unless I offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day. But let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. Has he done eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a ropemaker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodité nor the Graces.

Who was it then?