De mercede

If the master is of a jealous disposition and has handsome sons or a young wife, and you are not wholly estranged from Aphrodite and the Graces,

your situation is not peaceful or your danger to be taken lightly. The king has many ears and eyes, which not only see the truth but always add something more for good measure, so that they may not be considered heavy-lidded. You must therefore keep your head down while you are at table, as at a Persian dinner, for fear that an eunuch may see that you looked at one of the concubines ; for another eunuch, who has had his bow bent this long time, is ready to punish you for eyeing what you should not, driving his arrow through your. cheek just as you are taking a drink.

. Then, after you have left the dinner-party, you get a little bit of sleep, but towards cock-crow you wake up and say: “Oh, how miserable and wretched Iam! To think what I left—the occupations of former days, the comrades, the easy life, the sleep limited only by my inclination, and the strolls in freedom—and what a pit I have impetuously flung myself into! Why, in heaven’s name? What does this splendid salary amount to? Was there no other way in which I could have earned more than this and could have kept my freedom and full independence? As the case stands now, I am pulled about like a lion leashed with a thread, as the saying is, up hill and down dale; and the most pitiful part of it all is that I do not know how to be a success and cannot be a favourite. I am an outsider in such matters and have not the knack of it, especially when I am put in comparison with men who have ‘made an art of the business. Consequently I am unentertaining and not a bit convivial; I cannot even raise a laugh. I am aware, too, that it often actually annoys him to look at me, above all when he

wishes to be merrier than his wont, for Iseem to him gloomy. I cannot suit him at all. If I keep to gravity, I seem disagreeable and almost a person to run away from ; and if I smile and make my features as pleasant as I can, he despises me outright and abominates me. The thing makes no better impression than as if one were to play a comedy in a tragic mask! All in all, what other life shall I live for myself, poor fool, after having lived this one for another?”