"The dancers! Let the daughters from Gades come!" they called with tremulous voices, the fiery spark of intoxication glowing in their eyes.
"Yes; let the dancing girls come!" cried Euphobias rousing from his stupor. "I want to see how this honorable people disturbs its digestion, which is the best gift to man, by the lewd steps of the daughters of Hercules."
Sónnica made a sign to her steward, and in a moment the joyous sound of flutes was heard in the peristyle.
"The auletai!" shouted the guests.
Four slender girls, violet-crowned, marched into the triclinium, wearing a chiton open from waist to ankle, displaying the left leg at every step, holding to their mouths the double aulos, their agile fingers playing over the holes of the instrument.
Standing in the space enclosed by the curve of the table, they began a sweet melopœia, which caused the guests to sit up in their couches and to smile placidly. Most of them recognized the flute players as old acquaintances, and swinging their heads in time with the music, they watched with avid eyes the outlines of their bodies which swayed rhythmically from the movement of their dancing feet.
Several times the flutists changed the tune and measure, but at the end of an hour the guests became bored.
"We are used to all this," protested Lachares; "they are the same flutists who always play at your banquets, Sónnica. Since you have fallen in love you forget your friends. Give us something else! Let us see the dancers!"
"Yes, let the dancing girls come!" chorused the young men.
"Have patience," said the Greek woman, lifting her head for an instant from Actæon's breast; "the dancers will appear, but not until the end of the banquet when I am overcome with sleep. I know you well, and I can guess what the finish of the feast will be. First I wish you to see a little slave who has learned from the Grecian mariners tricks like those of celebrated Athenian performers."