"Mistress, Euphobias the parasite is trying to enter."
The guests burst into cries and protests on hearing this.
"Throw him out, Sónnica! He will make us miserable!" shouted the young men, recalling with anger his jeers in the Forum at their dress and manners.
"It is a shame for the city to tolerate that insolent beggar," said the grave citizens.
Sónnica smiled, then suddenly recalling a cruel epigram which the parasite had dedicated to her, and had recited in the Forum a few days before, she said frigidly to the steward:
"Drive him away with a club."
The guests bathed their hands at a lavabo of perfumed water which a slave passed from couch to couch, and Sónnica had given the order to commence the banquet when the steward returned with a rough-knobbed club clutched in his hand.
"I have beaten him, mistress, but he will not go. He suffers the blows, but after each one he works his way a little farther into the house."
"And what does he say?"
"He says that one of Sónnica's feasts is impossible without the presence of Euphobias, and that the blows are a sign of appreciation."