Sim. And me the bread made of the middle quality of foreign wheat.
Scop. Why do you wish that?
Sim. Because I have both heard and found from experience that I eat less when the bread has not a fine taste.
Scop. Here, boy, bring him common bread, and even the black bread if he prefers. We will have the most pleasant of meals, if every one shall take what most pleases him.
Pol. This bread, which you praise so much, is spongy, watery; I prefer it thicker.
Crit. I indeed don’t dislike it spongy—so long as it isn’t hastily made. But this also has cracks such as cakes baked on the hearth are accustomed to have, although, as is sufficiently clear, this came out of the oven.
Pol. This black bread is both sour and full of chaff; you would say that it was from flour of second-rate wheat.
Scop. So our husbandmen are accustomed to do with all wheat which they bring hither; first to make it pungent with the common, and to mix it with all kinds of seeds; the taste then comes from the leaven being excessive.
Pol. No class of men are more deceptive than husbandmen. They only act wrongly through ignorance.