Nigrinus

“Far more ridiculous, however, than the rich are those who visit them and pay them court. They get up at midnight, run all about the city, let servants bolt the doors in their faces and suffer themselves to be called dogs, toadies and similar names. By way of reward for this galling round of visits they get the much-talked-of dinner, a vulgar thing, the source of many evils. How much they eat there,

how much they drink that they do not want, and how much they say that should not have been said! At last they go away either finding fault or nursing a grievance, either abusing the dinner or accusing ‘the host of insolence and neglectfulness. They fill the side-streets, puking and fighting at the doors of brothels, and most of them go to bed by daylight and give the doctors a reason for making their rounds. Not all, though ; for some—would you believe it ?—haven’t even time to be ill!