With the concurrence of my patron, I have
adopted a plan that will henceforth tame them efficiently!'
'Are you at liberty to communicate it?'
'By the keys of St. Peter, I wish I could see it practised on every
estate in the land! It is this:--Near a sulphur lake at some distance
from my farm-house is a tract of marshy ground, overspread here and
there by the ruins of an ancient slaughter-house. I propose to dig in
this place several subterranean caverns, each of which shall be capable
of holding twenty men. Here my mutinous slaves shall sleep after their
day's labour. The entrances shall be closed until morning with a large
stone, on which I will have engraven this inscription: 'These are the
dormitories invented by Gordian, bailiff of Saturninus, a nobleman, for
the reception of refractory slaves.'
'Your plan is ingenious; but I suspect your slaves (so insensible to
hardships are the brutal herd) will sleep as unconcernedly in their new
dormitories as in their old.'
'Sleep! It will be a most original species of repose that they will
taste there! The stench of the sulphur lake will breathe Sabian odours
for them over a couch of mud! Their anointing oil will be the slime of
attendant reptiles! Their liquid perfumes will be the stagnant oozings
from their chamber roof! Their music will be the croaking of frogs and
the humming of gnats; and as for their adornments, why, they will be
decked forth with head-garlands of twining worms, and movable brooches
of cockchafers and toads! Tell me now, most sagacious Socius, do you
still think that amidst such luxuries as these my slaves will sleep?'
'No; they will die.
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