We all join in the applause started by the domestics and laughingly fall to on the choice viands. Trimalchio, as pleased as anybody with a device of the sort, now called out, “Cut!” Instantly the Carver advanced, and posturing in time to the music, sliced up the joint with such antics you might have thought him a jockey struggling to pull off a chariot-race to the thunder of the organ. Yet all the while Trimalchio kept repeating in a wheedling voice, “Cut! Cut!” For my part, suspecting there was some pretty jest connected with this everlasting reiteration of the word, I made no bones about asking the question of the guest, who sat immediately above me. He had often witnessed similar scenes and told me at once, “You see the man who is carving; well; his name is Cut. The master is calling and commanding him at one and the same time.”

Unable to eat any more, I now turned towards my neighbour in order to glean what information I could, and after indulging in a string of general remarks, presently asked him, “Who is that lady bustling up and down the room yonder?” “Trimalchio’s lady,” he replied; “her name is Fortunata, and she counts her coin by the bushelful! Before? what was she before? Why! my dear Sir! saving your respect, you would have been mighty sorry to take bread from her hand. Now, by hook or by crook, she’s got to heaven, and is Trimalchio’s factotum. In fact if she told him it was dark night at high noon, he’d believe her. The man’s rolling in riches, and really can’t tell what he has and what he hasn’t got; still his good lady looks keenly after everything, and is on the spot where you least expect to see her. She’s temperate, sober and well advised, but she has a sharp tongue of her own and chatters like a magpie between the bed-curtains. When she likes a man, she likes him; and when she doesn’t, well! she doesn’t.