"
While he was thus talking, a cup dropt out of a boy's hand; on which,
Trimalchio looking over his shoulder at him, bad him begone, and kill
himself immediately; "for," said he, "thou art careless and mind'st
not what thou art about." The boy hung his lip, and besought him; but
he said, "What! dost thou beseech me, as if I required some difficult
matter of thee? I only bid thee obtain this of thy self, that thou be
not careless again." But at last he discharged him upon our entreaty.
On this the boy run round the table and cry'd, "Water without doors,
and wine within." We all took the jest, but more especially
Agamemnon, who knew on what account himself had been brought thither.
Trimalchio in the mean time hearing himself commended, drank all the
merrier, and being within an ace of quite out, "Will none of you,"
said he, "invite my Fortunata to dance? Believe me, there's no one
leads a country dance better:" And with that, tossing his hands round
his head, fell to act a jack-pudding; the family all the while
singing, 'youth it self, most exactly youth it self ;' and he had
gotten into the middle of the room, but that Fortunata whispered him,
and I believe told him, such gambols did not become his gravity. Nor
was there any thing more uneven to it self; for one while he turned to
his Fortunata, and another while to his natural inclination: But what
disturbed the pleasure of her dancing, was his notaries coming in;
who, as they had been the acts of a common council, read aloud:
'VII.
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