[75]

He is older now -- God's curse upon him! I crave your pardon for my warmth of language. But his house is the dwelling-place of panders, his whole household foul with sin, himself a man of infamous character, his wife a harlot, his son s like their parents. His door night and day is battered with the kicks of wanton gallants, his windows loud with the sound of loose serenades, his dining-room wild with revel, his bedchambers the haunt of adulterers. For no one need fear to enter it save he who has no gift for the husband. Thus does he make an income from the shame of his own bed. Once he had been good at making money everywhere with his own body, now with that of wife. With none but him -- it is not a lie! -- with none but him most m ake the arrangements for a night with his wife. So here we have this well known collusion of husband and wife: whoever have brought a large sum to the woman are not checked by anyone and can leave as they wish. Whoever has come with less, are caught as ad ulterers, after a sign has been given; and as if they had come to school, they are not allowed to leave before they have `written something.'

What else should the wretch do? He has lost a considerable fortune, though I admit that he only got that fortune unexpectedly through a fraudulent transaction on the part of his father. The latter, having borrowed money from a number of persons, preferre d to keep their money at the cost of his own good name. Bills poured in on every side with demands for payment. Every one that met him laid hands on him as though he were a madman. `Steady, now!' he says, stating that he cannot pay. So he resigned his golden rings and all the badges of his position in society and thus came to terms with his creditors. But he had by a most ingenious fraud transferred the greater part of his property to his wife, and so, although he himself was needy, ill-clad and pr otected by the very depth of his fall, managed to leave this same Rufinus -- I am telling you the truth and nothing but the truth -- no less than 3,000,000 sesterces to be squandered on riotous living. This was the sum that came to him unencumbered from h is mother's property, over and above the daily dowry brought him by his wife. Yet all this money has been ravenously devoured by this glutton in a few short years, all this fortune has been destroyed by the infinite variety of his gormandizing; so that yo u might really think him to be afraid of seeming in any way to be the gainer by his father's dishonesty. This honourable fellow actually took care that what had been ill-gained should be ill-spent, nor was anything left him from his too ample fortune, sav e his depraved ambition and his boundless appetite.