Sometimes I feel there are avenging Furies--_Dirae_, we Latins call them--haunting me." Pratinas laughed incredulously.

"Surely, my dear fellow," he began, "you don't need to have the old superstitions explained away again, do you ?" "No, no," was his answer; Lucius capitulating another time.
So it came to pass that Pratinas had an interview with Phaon, Lucius's freedman, a sleek, well-oiled Sicilian Greek, who wore his hair very long to cover the holes bored in his ears--the mark of old-time servitude.

He was the darling of waiting-maids; the collector of all current scandal; the master spirit in arranging dinners, able to tell a Tuscan from a Lucanian boar by mere taste.

He used also to help his patron compose _billets-doux,_ and had, by his twistings and scrapings, repeatedly staved off Phormio, Lucius's importunate creditor.

As for Phaon's heart, it was so soft and tender that the pricks of conscience, if he ever had any, went straight through, without leaving a trace behind.