"I guess from their faces that I have advertised my ignorance of what is perfectly well known to everybody else here.

Remove my disabilities." I hesitated and then went in with a rush.
"It does not matter a particle," I said, "how often I lie down to dinner with Agathemer when we are alone.

Since I am then the only freeman in the villa there are no witnesses of our dining together.

But if I have him to dinner with any guest he becomes thereby a freeman, as you very well know.
And if I were free to set him free and chose to free him in that fashion, I should have to advise my friends in advance of my intentions and ask whether they were willing to lend themselves to such a proceeding.

One cannot invite a man without previous explanation and then, when he's already in one's house, ask him to lie down to dinner with a slave." "Slave!" Tanno roared at me, his face red as the back of a boiled lobster.
If I had just missed being angry with him, there was no doubt that he was in a tearing fury with me.
"Slave ?" he repeated.