Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 1.djvu/52

 came to a more obscure quarter, the affable old lady pushed aside a crazy-quilt and remarked, “Here’s where you ought to live,” and when I denied that I recognized the house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you would have thought that he had been brought by the selfsame little old hag! I smiled at that, greeted him cordially, and asked him what he was doing in such a scandalous place.

  Wiping away the sweat with his hands, he replied, “If you only knew what I have gone through!” “What was it?” I demanded. “A most re- Rh