At last, when the melody took a louder and more martial character, the sleeping patrician slowly opened his eyes and stared vacantly around him.
'My respected patron,' said the polite Carrio in apologetic tones, 'commanded that I should awaken him with the dawn; the daybreak has already appeared.' When the freedman had ceased speaking, Vetranio sat up on the couch, called for a basin of water, dipped his fingers in the refreshing liquid, dried them abstractedly on the long silky curls of the singing-boy who stood beside him, gazed about him once more, repeated interrogatively the word 'daybreak', and sunk gently back upon his couch.

We are grieved to confess it--but the author of the Nightingale Sauce was moderately inebriated.
A short pause followed, during which the freedman and the singing-boy stared upon each other in mutual perplexity.

At length the one resumed his address of apology, and the other resumed his efforts on the lyre.
Once more, after an interval, the eyes of Vetranio lazily unclosed, and this time he began to speak; but his thoughts--if thoughts they could be called--were as yet wholly occupied by the 'table-talk' at the past night's banquet.
'The ancient Egyptians--oh, sprightly and enchanting Camilla--were a wise nation!' murmured the senator drowsily.

'I am myself descended from the ancient Egyptians; and, therefore, I hold in high veneration that cat in your lap, and all cats besides.

Herodotus--an historian whose works I feel a certain gratification in publicly mentioning as good--informs us, that when a cat died in the dwelling of an ancient Egyptian, the owner shaved his eyebrows as a mark of grief, embalmed the defunct animal in a consecrated house, and carried it to be interred in a considerable city of Lower Egypt, called 'Bubastis'-- an Egyptian word which I have discovered to mean The Sepulchre of all the Cats; whence it is scarcely erroneous to infer--' At this point the speaker's power of recollection and articulation suddenly failed him, and Carrio--who had listened with perfect gravity to his master's oration upon cats--took immediate advantage of the opportunity now afforded him to speak again.
'The equipage which my patron was pleased to command to carry him to Aricia,' said he, with a strong emphasis on the last word, 'now stands in readiness at the private gate of the palace gardens.' As he heard the word 'Aricia', the senator's powers of recollection and perception seemed suddenly to return to him.