"That monster is not dead! Hena! he is not dead!" I cried in despair. "And my daughter is not dead either! Hesus, Teutates, take pity on my daughter!"
"Your daughter, gallows bird! Your daughter is in Trymalcion's hands, and it is upon her he will wreak his revenge on you. He rejoices over the circumstance in advance. He sometimes is taken with savage caprices, and is rich enough to indulge them."
I was unable to make answer to these words, save with long drawn out moans.
"And that is not all, infamous scoundrel! I have lost the confidence of the centurion to whom I sold you. He reproached me with having outrageously deceived him; with having sold him, instead of a lamb, a tiger who exercised his teeth upon rich patricians. He wanted to sell you right back. To sell you back, as if anyone would consent to buy—after such an exhibition! As well buy a wild beast. Luckily for me, I received the deposit before witnesses. The fierceness of your nature will not set aside the contract; the centurion has no choice but to keep you. He'll keep you, I warrant, but he'll make you pay dear for your criminal instincts. Oh, you don't know the life that awaits you in the ergastula! You don't know—"
"But my son," I asked, interrupting the "horse-dealer," well knowing that he would answer out of cruelty. "Is my son also sold? To whom?"
"Sold? And who do you think would still want him? Sold? Better say given away. You bring bad luck to everybody, double traitor. Did not your ragings and the shrieks of that mis-born limb teach everyone that he is of your beastly blood? No one offered even an obole for him! Who would buy a wolf's whelp? Anyway, I was going to speak to you about that son of yours, to delight your father's heart. Know that he was given to boot by my partner at the end of the sale, to the same purchaser to whom he sold the grey-haired matron, who will be good to turn a mill-wheel."
"And that purchaser," I enquired, "who is he? What is he going to do with my son?"
"That purchaser is the centurion—your master!"
"Hesus!" I exclaimed, hardly able to believe what I heard. "Hesus, you are kind and merciful. At least I shall have my son near me."
"Your son near you! Then you are as stupid as you are scoundrelly. Ah, do you imagine that it is for your paternal contentment that your master has burdened himself with that wolf-cub? Do you know what your master said to me? 'I have only one means of subduing that savage beast you sold me, you egregious cheat.—The chances are, that madman loves his little one. I'll keep the wolf-whelp in a cage, and the son will answer to me for the father's docility.—At the father's first, and least offence, he will see the tortures which he will make his cub suffer, under my very eyes.'"